fortunately, I never studied law

[September 2000]
The Road Runner stands suspended over the abyss near a sign which reads “Bridge Out.” He is immune to plummeting by virtue of the simple fact that Road Runners can’t read. Bugs Bunny, likewise, is immune to the law of gravity because he never studied law. A million cop shows have informed me that ignorance of the law is no excuse, and yet the ignorance of my animated role models allowed them to get away with nearly anything. More and more, I am coming to realize that the Warner Brothers philosophy is the correct one. Ignorance of certain laws is not only an excuse, it is the desireable state of being.

When I was much younger, I believed that I was blessed. When I heard the phrase “Golden Child” I knew they were talking about me> I knew that spiritually I was the seventh son of a seventh son, in spite of technically being the firstborn of a fourth. Growing up, I was never told that I couldn’t do anything. I don’t mean I wasn’t told that I couldn’t run in traffic or that I couldn’t smoke, I mean I was never told that any dream was beyond my reach.
I guess I didn’t accomplish everything I ever set out to do, but I never felt like failure was evidence that I couldn’t do something, just that I hadn’t managed it yet.

My dream from about the age of three was to be an actor. More specifically, my dream from the age of 3-5 was to be a clown, and from 5-7 it was to be a movie monster. By the time I hit the age of seven, I understood enough to know that, as an actor, I could do all of those things and more. Of course, there were always naysayers. “There are a million actors in the world” they would say, “but only a few of them are actually successful.” This didn’t dishearten me at all. Of course most of them weren’t successful! It takes a special type of person to be a world renowned actor. A person like me. A golden child. I’m not sure how many times I was told my dream was foolish, or how many times I was told I couldn’t do whatever I set out to do, but one time – maybe the million-and-first time – it finally stuck.

In my late twenties I was on the board of directors for a local theater company. It wss in this company that I first began to see acting as an art, and not just a passion. It was here, too, that my muse died. I worked very hard to make the company succeed. I’d go to my day job at 7am and work until 3pm, at which point I’d go home, grab a bite, and dash off to the theater by 5. Most nights I was there until 11pm, and not infrequently until 1 or 2am. I was happy about it. I was, after all, building a dream. What I didn’t realize at first was that it wasn’t my dream. What I finally came to understand was that I was acting as the support team for someone else’s dream, while having the message “you aren’t good enough, you’ll never succeed” hammered into my brain over and over again. After a few years, I finally learned the lesson.

It’s amazing, once you believe that something is impossible, just how quickly you fail. It took me years before I was able to drive past the theater without a profound sense of loss, and even longer before I began to believe that I could possibly be something other than just another faceless member of the masses. That I have been able to unlearn the lesson of the ordinary is a tribute to my parents and the fact that they never tried to disabuse me of the idea that I could do anything I set my mind to. That, and my extensive collection of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Two-Fisted Tales of Website Justice

As dawn breaks over the digital frontier we find our heroes, Zeke Jeffers, “Ace” Kimball, Luke Anderson, and “Miss Adventure” Molly Malone, gazing with flinty eye over the vast, arid webscape. Devil-may-care hell-for-leather web designers with a taste for action, they are the spirit of the wild, wild web. They ventured out onto this untamed wilderness and bent it to their wills, creating one paradigm shattering site after another. The vast expanse of cyberspace was their domain, and they were its masters.

Today, however, was different. The once open plain glinted in the early morning sunlight with acre after silvery acre of fence, networking its way toward the horizon. “Cat herders” spat Molly; “they’re everywhere.” That was the truth – it hadn’t been that long since the unpleasantness back in Usenet when old Sid Tacktle and his gang rained terror on the first cat herders – harassing them, mocking them, even threatening their livestock – but still they came. The website land rush was on, and there was no turning back.

High Noon. Zeke and the others sat in the cool dark of the Dirty Dog Saloon, strapping on their gear. Rumor was that the boys from the K Bar K ranch were headed into town with mischief on their minds. It was to be a showdown and no two ways about it. The Bar K boys had been doing quite a bit with their tiny nonstandard interfaces and were anxious to show their chops. “Maybe they won’t come,” said Luke, eyeing the door. “Oh, they’ll come,” said Ace as he fingered his matching perl handlers, “with all them ‘Flash’ boys around, they need all the cred they can get.” In the corner, Molly just snorted. She hated this sort of thing, and wished she could be off somewhere tending to her content.

“It’s time,” said Zeke.

Light flooded in as the door to the Dog swung outward, but instead of the deserted street that they had come to expect when there was a design shootout in the air, it was teeming with people. There were cat herders, of course, but there were also families, children, and, to their horror, SHOPPERS. “When did Main Street get so wide?” thought Luke, looking out at all of the roadrunner nodes and broadband connections that seemed to have sprung up overnight. It wasn’t just the street, though. Where there once had been a rowdy little design town on the edge of the technological frontier, there was now a full scale city. Simple ranching had given way to homesteading, and now it seemed as if everyone and their dog had a website. “But… how?” sputtered Zeke, realizing there would be no battle of skills here, that in fact they would be hard pressed to even find anyone from the Bar K in all the chaos. The answer was right in front of them. Next to the ISP station, where once had stood Justin’s House of Ill Repute, sat a brand new building sporting the sign “Evan O’Houlihan’s Newfangled Prebuilt Housing Emporium and Land Deed Office.”

“Kill ’em,” said Ace. “Kill ’em all.” Ace never did have much of a sense of humor about the tenderfoot masses, he considered them interlopers with no right to the space he had worked so hard to tame. Of course they couldn’t. Kill them, that is. They could shoot up the Land Deed office or try to chase off the homesteaders, but they knew in the end that it was too late. Times had changed, and what was once wild and anarchic was now teeming with regular boring people. Oh sure they seemed to be having a good time, chatting amongst themselves, going to their little socials, even creating their own mundane little sites and trying to impress each other with their “mad skilz,” but in truth they were pale shadows of those who had come before them. Zeke turned and went back into The Dog, followed by the others. He didn’t need to check his email to get the message. Their time here was over.

“There’s a lot of good work in community building these days,” he mused. “Maybe I’ll start some forums, try to pass on a little of what made us special to the next generation.” Luke coughed. “Been there, done that. I’m off in search of something new. There has to be some unspoiled country left somewhere.” Molly and Ace nodded in agreement; there was always The Next Big Thing. As it had with the gopher prospectors before them, the electronic world had moved on without them. History would certainly treat them well, legends who stood ten feet tall and lit up the night with their bold exploits and dynamic flair, but regular folks like having a little space between themselves and their idols, since having one in the neighborhood only serves to illustrate how mundane the rest of their world is, and how limited their skills. Nobody cheered as the heroes left, but nobody tried to stop them, either.

And so dear reader, as our heroes ride off into the sunset to search for The Next Big Thing, the iBurbanites drift into peaceful slumber. Soon, however, the silence is broken by a siren’s wail, then another, and another. Somewhere in the city, a new generation of iBurban kids, born never knowing of a world without the net, are hacking away at the blocky, restrictive ideas that surround them and mutating them into something new and dangerous. The old frontier might have been buried, but its spirit wasn’t gone, not by a long shot. Somewhere in the night, a coyote howled.

Robot Girl has been very busy making Guerrilla Banners… It’s pretty much the Robot Girl show over there right now. That’s great, ’cause she’s doing a good job (I especially like the Death Peach banner she put up last night) I hope that her creative burst brings some of the other Guerrillas out of the woodwork. If that happens, I may have to go buy a Robot Girl T-Shirt to celebrate.

The Utsler women are all very strong.
This may not seem like a particularly unusual statement until you realize that most of them are in the family because they married Utsler men. The truth is, our family practices a particularly brutal form of social darwinism, and only the really strong women survive. It’s not that we have an unusually high incidence of divorce either, the weak ones just never make it anywhere near the altar. What is it about us that scares off all but the bravest females of the species? We’re not violent, we’re not mean, we’re not even particularly smelly. So what is it?

You know in all those Cosmo polls, how the women always rate ‘sense of humor’ as the most important thing in a man? Those women haven’t met my family. In the same way that gangs jump in new members by beating them mercilessly, my family jumps in potential spouses by teasing them within an inch of their sanity. The difference is that once you are in a gang, the beating stops. In my family you thicken your skin and sharpen your wit, because if you aren’t giving – you are most certainly getting. Teasing or "picking" is done as bonding behaviour between parent and child, between siblings, and between spouses. It’s done as chastisement for bad behaviour and as punishment for being “too serious.” It’s also done as training. Teasing begins with the first date (or, preferably, at first sight) and ends… well… my Uncle Elmer died years ago and we still tease him. (It’s okay, he can take it.) I’ve found that it’s best to come out of the gate strong so that you don’t waste your time with the lightweights, because there’s no sense in getting attached to the ones that aren’t going to make it. Within the Utsler family you should tease your potential mate mercilessly, because you know the rest of the family will, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. We’re a close family and we all love each other, but nobody gets special treatment – and we can smell fear. Last year my sister in law went "Back to Iowa" for the first time, and I have to tell you that we was a bit worried. I can’t even imagine what it was like for my cousins, trying to date in Winterset where everyone already knew the family.

There are families full of star atheletes, destined for scholarships and endorsements. Other families produce purebred doctors or lawyers. For others, it’s crime. Our family breeds smartasses. Not run of the mill sassmouths you understand – I’m talking about sarcastic, barb-tongued, humor bullies. We’re merciless. We have to be, we’d never have survived childhood if we weren’t. This is not to say that we are without compassion – quite the contrary. Most of us use our power for good – fighting hatred and injustice with sarcasm and wit. Oh sure, there are a few among us that would gutshoot you with a sharp comment, leaving you shamed and confused, the object of laughter and derision for the world – but they’re the exception. Really. The rest of us are a bunch of sweet and fluffy bunnies who would never do anything to make you feel bad. Oh sure, we’ll tease you a little, but it’s all in good fun…

Where will I be in the year 2000?

In the year 2000 I will be 35 for almost the whole year. I will turn 36 in 2000 but it will be almost 2001. In the year 2000 I will live in Hollywood because I am going to be an actor but I wont be an actor still in 2000 because I will have stoped to be a computer man. I live in a big house now but when I am 35 in 2000 I will be old so I want to live in a little apartment and it would be okay if there was a hole in the roof because I could see the sky at night and it would be like camping. I like camping and even when theres bug because they are like little pets that you dont have to clean up after or feed. Maybe in 2000 I will have bug pets so that I don’t have to clean up after them. In the year 2000 we will have lots of television chanels and they will be on all the time and if I want to stay awake and watch all night I can. In the year 2000 I will go to work flying on my jetpack or maybe when the jetpack is broke I will ride a motorcycle. I dont have a girlfriend now but when I’m old in the year 2000 I will probably have a beutiful wife. She will be a actress or maybe a bellydancer.

January 14, 1976
Room 204 – Miss DiManna
GRADE 5 TIME CAPSULE