Hi! You signed up to be part of a little experiment I'm calling The

Long Talk. Here's how it works: if you respond, you get another email

the next day. If you don't respond, you don't. We go until there's

only one person left. I will then buy them a pony. (legal disclaimer:

I will not buy them a pony)


--


Today I'm going to write you a haiku about my life. Write me one back

about your life.


It’s been warm lately

In this busy and nice year

I have tons of kids


I think I’ve got it!

Finally I can—wait, no

Give me five minutes


Today I was sick

It's a nice day in London

Shame I was indoors 


Need a vacation

Too much work, not enough sleep

Is this adulthood?


something happened to my legs

i was ok with it

it’s not serious


birthday bike for wife

i got one to ride along

my first bike commute


Tuesdays are the day

I often call in work sick

And just watch Netflix


My English is poor

Summer is here at long last

My cold does not fade


Been drinking too much

Getting my act together

Also, house cleaning


Love me some ice-cream

Betwixt design and purple

No kids, however.


Brunches on Sunday.

Karl the Fog in mountains.

Lots of future trips.


Hah, I am so curious how long I am going to go. I am so terrible with email sometimes. 


I have a new job

It is a nice place to work

It’s fun to be new


First haiku I’ve written in many years. Totally finger counted at my desk.



Nintendo E3,

Sure was a great sight to see,

I want a Wii U


Once we wrote a song

called “Whatever Happens Next,”

things got pretty weird.


Hi Jon,


This sounds really cool. Kind of like The Listserve, but with a daily opt-in.


The first years finals

Uncertainty of accomplishments

Lovely ice cream


Needing to slow down

Embrace the stillness, savor

Rushing to what end?



Hi! Since my first language is french, this one is not easy for me! 


This is my try :)

-----------------

Summer is arrived

It's been a long cold winter

I will eat ice cream


Manifique! :)


spent most of the day

talking to engineers and

soon i'll take a walk


Oh man, poetry. You have no intentions of making this easy, do you? :)

I don't think I've ever gotten a half-decent haiku down on paper. I guess this should fit the definition:


Ring on my finger

And a house to go with it

Busy busy bee


Cheers,


Sam


I am from meatspace.

Not sure how long I'll keep up

But it should be fun


I exist online

I am present in meatspace

I am alive here


It's been a long year.

Ponder the meaning of things;

Lose the day dreaming.


--


P.S.

It's sort of a meta haiku (multiple of 5 characters, multiple of 7,

multiple of 5) counting punctuation and whitespace.


P.P.S.

Going forward should I reply to: you, longtalk@, or both?


Thanks, Sam! Replying to me works great :)



Hi Jon


I'm so glad to see I made the list. What will happen to the things I (and others) send back to you?


Knife on the counter

My once crisp white shirt now red

Spilled tomato sauce


Not sure yet, but thanks for writing! :)



Wind is singing his song.

Millions of stars in the pale sky.

Which of them is me?


Up, the lines are thin

Walking them is mindfulness

But I want the ground


I live in China

but only for the summers

don’t feed the Gwailo



Writing my thesis

Loneliest project ever

Let's go to the beach


Warm and tired

The rain is out with the sun

Decisions are hard


Thanks, Christian! But unfortunately this response came in after 24 hours from the original post. Frowny face.


I liked your haiku, though. Good look with the decision :)


(pick the option more likely to make you happy on weekends)



Argh! Thanks Jon : ) happy experimenting 





Congratulations! 35% of the list dropped off, but not you!


I do a thing called "three things", where I pick the three things I'm focusing on (outside of work) right now. Here's mine:


1. Practicing a talk

2. Writing short stories

3. MarioKart 8


What are yours?


1. Writing a play

2. Learning about topology

3. Making the time


1. My newsletter zzmag.com

2. Smoking fewer cigarettes

3. Eating betterer


1. Planning my trip to Europe (logistics more than actual activities).

2. Finally hanging some art in my house.

3. Keeping my plants alive for a change.


I don’t do that, although it sounds like a good idea. I’ll make some up – they are somewhat based in truth.


1. Learning French

2. Learning Swift

3. Drawing


1. What do I want to do in life?

2. Building Design Integration Portfolio

3. Biking


1. Wedding planning

2. Wildstar (that new MMORPG)

3. Walking more


1. crossfit

2. planning my vacation

3. improving my ukulele playing



1. Formula 1 racing

2. Video games

3. Comic books


*sigh*. Yes, I am an adult. :(


1. Strategizing how I can find myself in Vienna again before summer's over.

2. Preparing for talks in informal/leisure settings.

3. Upping serendipity by joining weird experiments like this.


1. Draw/paint - some activity where I use my hands instead if the computer 


2. Read more books than internet


3. Make friends



1. Being patient with my son.

2. Throwing out things I don't need.

3. Reading a book a week.


1. Do I buy a Wii U?

2. Predicting questions I'll be fielding for my final exam today

3. Figuring out how to get to San Francisco to meet up with my parents


1. Meditating

2. Journaling

3. Cooking more


Outside of coursework:


1. Extending knowledge

2. (Trying to) be confident in myself.

3. Let's Plays


Here mine!

1. I'm running 5k (trying) :)

2. Gardening

3. Playing monument valley


The NYC Infrastructure Observatory

Meeting new people

Giving my girlfriend what she needs


That’s an easy one!


1. Studying up on some science, physics and astronomy. That stuff’s all Chinese right now, so I’m trying to change that. Hard to find any “intermediate” level writings on those subjects, though.

2. I got into doing old-skool jigsaw puzzles last month, so there’s that. I think it’s some sort of hyperfocus thing.

3. I’m building a house. Any home owner will probably agree that that’s one of the biggest time sinks imaginable (other than having kids that is).


I wish I could add some video games to that list, but those would probably require a 25th hour on the clock.


Cheers,


Sam


1. Various creative coding projects (Music, moving images, etc.)

2. Photography

3. Side projects (meatspace bots, local multiplayer Cards Against Humanity, Bonjour clipboard and file sharing)


And because I'm not very good at following directions here's another:


4. Meatspac.es is my guilty pleasure.


1. Following an online course

2. Creating better eating habits

3. Putting together a half-decent website for myself


1. Reading news

2. Teaching a girl from tech support what to say to a user

3. Tweaking new menu design


1. Learning to draw

2. Unlocking all the ships in FTL

3. Teaching my kid how to play chess


1. cooking and making sauces

2. Threes! for iOS

3. bookbinding




8% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day three.


Today's email is about gathering feedback. The previous days (haiku

and three things) gave me a ton of insight into what everyone's doing.

Next I want to hear about The Long Talk itself.


1) How many days do you think you'll do this?

2) How many days do you think the last person will go to?

3) What kinds of things should I ask tomorrow and beyond?


1. I could see myself enjoying this for a couple months. I’d probably enjoy it longer but I’m sure I’ll miss a day sooner than I intend to give up.

2. The winner will last for years. Just you two talking directly to each other.

3. I’d like to see future emails being inspired by (created by?) other participants’ responses to previous days!


1. Until I reach a Catastrophic Event (eg. marooned on an island with no battery or iCloud decides to bounce emails, etc)

2. Probably 6 months or so

3. A fun drawing task


1) How many days do you think you'll do this?


7


2) How many days do you think the last person will go to?


300+


3) What kinds of things should I ask tomorrow and beyond?


When the numbers are low enough you should ask for a short sentence that will be sent to everyone in the next email, anonymously. It will be fun to read. Like a manually operated Secret.


Oo, good idea. Thanks!


1. I think I will drop out this weekend - going camping, not sure I will be able to check mail. 

2. I think the last person will go 30 days or more

3. ask people to show their best


1. I'll probably fall off on some Sunday when I forget to check my phone. I'll probably last about 6 weeks.

2. How many people do you have left? Like 125? Probably about 2 years.

3. I dunno. The more complex the question the less likely I am to want to answer it. I'd like to know what you plan on doing with all this data.


1) I usually check my email daily but sometimes, if travelling or something I can miss it. So it will depend on how soon will I go on vacation or how quick will you decide to drop me off. Let's say 20 more days.


2) My bet, over 800 days. I suppose you are automating part (or all) of the sending process. If you are sending this manually (not one by one but triggering the sending by hand) I bet you will drop off before running of of subscribers.


3) demographic data


1. As many as there are

2. As many as I go

3. Surprise me


1) I don't know. Want to try for 100 but will probably get kicked off inadvertently. Ie if traveling all day without net access, in work deadline crush, event participation without a break, etc. 

2) 96

3) Gelato or dundurma or sherbet or creamy ice-cream?  Who/what are your spirit animals?


1) Until THE END!


2) let's see.. If you think of it in New Years resolutions terms, two months.


3) I always like thinking exercises. I was just remembering this psychology scenario. Where you imagine certain things in a room, then share how you pictured it, colors, size placement, then the next day tell everyone what each object represents in your life.


This is a version of it:

http://www.smallworlds.com/forum/threads/895633-The-Cube-Personality-Test


1. I think I could do it for months. 

2. I hope years.

3. Maybe re-use some of your children’s questions. My son hit me with “why don't girls play professional baseball” in an attempt to delay having to go to sleep. It worked! At some point do you think it will become a challenge to stump people?


Oo, great ideas. Thanks!


I don't think stumping will be an issue, more of a time/return question. I think "this question will take too long and I'm bored" will affect more people than anything else.


It's funny, I originally thought of this as a way to make people understand viscerally that big things are made of a series of small things done with discipline. And that's still true.


But other things are emerging too. This is so dang fun to run.


I'm not sure. I might lose Internet connectivity some day and fail to respond. Might just forget. I hope to at least last a month, but aiming for as long as possible. 


I think the last person will challenge you. You'll be down to a dedicated few for a long, long time. 


Tell us about your favorite things. Do you have a favorite board game? A favorite place? Why is that place your favorite?


1) As long as it goes.

2) The rest of our lives.

3) Art and God and Love


1) Probably until some summer day when I'm camping and offline. 

2) Perhaps until the end of the summer. 

3) Something that doesn't involve too much creativity. :p

—Johan


1) Until the end! If I don't forget! :)

2) Hum, 79 days

3) Book/movie suggestion (best/worst). Describe your city. What language do you spoke. What is your field of work. Best city you visited + 3 things to do there.


1. not sure, not trying to plan too far ahead :)

2. i'm guessing you're still chatting with *someone* after six weeks.

3. i would run little experiments, ask weird questions about preferences, etc.


Huzzah!


I had honestly forgotten about The Long Talk when the first mail came in ;)


1) I have a very strong, but short attention span. So I’ll probably drop out after a week or two. I’m approaching it with little interest in becoming the last person. Not because I don’t want to, but because neither of us wants this to turn into a “chore". Removing obligations often makes any task more enjoyable. Whenever I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, like taxes, I tell myself that as soon as I get bored, I can just leave the rest for tomorrow. (You can probably guess that that usually results in the whole bunch getting done anyway.)


Most likely I’ll forget to reply on some busy day and regret it afterward :)


2) It doesn’t seem unlikely that the last person will go on for as long as the mails keep coming. It might be more interesting to ask how much time you are willing to invest yourself. After all, it has to be a lot harder to come up with those questions than it is to answer them.


3) I’ve always been a big fan of design play exercises. Depending on the audience, that path might be worth exploring. In the long term, it could be interesting to make the tasks/questions increasingly demanding. I’m wondering if people are willing to reply by writing an article or short-story. If you’d rather keep things personal, I’ve always liked asking friends what their latest nightly dreams have been about. You’d be surprised what people’s minds come up with on autopilot.


Cheers,


Whoops :\


I think I might hang on for maybe a month. I think at some point I'll just have a day with internet troubles. Or I see the mail and decide I need to think about it before replying and then end up forgetting or not having an opportunity to send something. 


I'd expect this to maybe last for 6-9 months. So let's make that 250 days for the last person. 


I find it hard to give any suggestions because I have no idea what your plans are for the questions and for what you want to do with the answers. A further series of questions that requires some level of self-reflection can be fun. Like yesterday's question. Coming up with three things you're doing sounds easy, but it made me pause to think not just about what I was doing but also about what I wanted to be doing. 

You could even ask for actual questions from us (instead to the types of questions) and then send out those a day (or few days) later. That might work better when there aren't that many people left though.



I was wondering about the percentages you post. Are they percentages of the initial group, or of the remaining group? 

And I just need to ask, you won't spread written answers and/or identifying information outside this group, right (at least not without asking)?


1. I'll keep until 24th for sure, then I'll have a flight to US and who knows what'll happen there :)

2. Probably it will get boring after a couple of weeks. People get bored so fast! But maybe there's the One, who will keep replying just in the sake of stubbornness. He (or she) will last until you do.

3. That's surely depends on your goals. You could play all sorts of contextual instagram-like games, like in the last letter. Or, give tasks to design something. Or, ask some big questions on life/work/politics. But I wonder -- what will you do with all that data? Since you are the only one who will see it all. :)


That is a great question. No idea what I'm going to do with all this :)


I knew it! :)


:)


1) Going to try to go for 30 days!

2) There will always be at least 1 person that will go as long as you will!

3) Ask questions that will prompt more creative writing, not just day-to-day stuff! :)


1) 30 days

2) 150 days

3) what's the longest walk you've ever taken? What's your least favorite song in the world?




18% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day four :)



A few notes about this experiment, based on questions that people asked:


1) I don't know what I'm going to do with the responses

2) I won't use anyone's name without asking. More likely, if I end up

doing anything at all, it'd just be anonymous.

3) I'd like to share the percentage of people that dropped off, but I

don't want to share the precise numbers. I think some mystery there is

fun.


Ok! Here's today's challenge:


Without using personally identifiable information (your name, the city

you're in, etc) tell me something I'd only know if I lived where you

do. For example "No one drinks the water" is a good one, but "No one

drinks the water in Long Island" is less good and "My name is Fred

Jones, @fjones on Twitter, and no one drinks the water in Long Island"

is worst.


I'm going to share a few responses tomorrow. I like the idea of

recycling things I hear into later days.


Have a great Friday!


only tourists carry umbrellas. 


Every Tuesday sirens across the ENTIRE city are tested at noon. If you hear the Outdoor Public Warning System at any other time  it means something bad has happened. If you hear it on Tuesday at noon it means you should get some lunch.


Here's another but I couldn't figure out how to phrase it. http://blog.longnow.org/02007/09/19/cistern-circles-of-san-francisco/


There's literally a secret garden on the parallel street.


Oh man, see. I almost forgot to write you back!


So here's what you would (or should) know if you lived here: You buy a cheap bike and an expensive lock.


Hockey is part of our DNA


That subway car is empty for a reason.


In a couple of months, we'll be watching the salmon jump from our yard


An umbrella is never out of reach.


For a good time, hang out in the parking lot at the one gas station that sells dry ice.



The youth drink way too much alcohol. 



Jack owns this city


You don't want to know why the escalators are out of order all the time.


My city has (more or less) population 0 in August. It is a 4+ million people city the rest of the year. 


Previous day. I'm pleased that people fall off every day.


Folk wear skinny jeans and think warehouse raves are cool 


Less rain than most cities, but #1 for overcast days.


I’m totally going to keep an eye on mr. Jones’s follower count today.


Well, I’m from a teeny tiny farmer town, but curiously, even this small town is divided into two deelgemeentes (I tried looking up the English term, but there doesn’t appear to be any). Below the surface these two districts are fiercely competitive, constantly trying to unofficially one-up the other. Luckily enough things have been mostly amicable, and actual conflicts are extremely rare. Perfect Wes Anderson-esque indie movie material.


Enjoy the weekend. Try not to get lost in the World Cup craze :)


Cheers,


Sam


It's kinda crazy how many chicken bones are randomly on the sidewalk.



I you don't care about time at a night party, you can easily be late to get to your part of the city, back home. Because the bridges got raised! Believe me, sometimes it changes destinies. Like, when you can't get to your lover. Or, you can't get away from your lover :)


Nobody wears sneakers to a bar. 


Today's challenge:

One of the suburbs has its own local Batman, complete with costume and car:

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/qcYWDkZiWEw/hqdefault.jpg

http://thesheridansun.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BATMAN_10.jpg


BTW, I ignore the dropout stats as they're meaningless without the base #s.  And if new people are joining daily, then it compounds the issue as the base# changes daily.


Oh, new people aren't joining daily :) Fixed list, getting smaller.




Yesterday everyone responded. Here are some things we learned about where people are from:


* You buy a cheap bike and an expensive lock.

* For a good time, hang out in the parking lot at the one gas station that sells dry ice.

* There's literally a secret garden on the parallel street.

* Jack owns this city.

* That subway car is empty for a reason.

* It's kinda crazy how many chicken bones are randomly on the sidewalk.


Today’s response: write me a story.


When I was at school me and Nik were in a different house room than our own at lunch. We were trying to switch the light switch by high kicking it. One of my kicks caused the entire switch casing to explode. We legged it out of there. The boys who's house room it was got the blame. I still feel slightly bad about that.


Hi Jon


I'm afraid I'm not a very good story teller, and English is not my first language so please excuse any spelling/grammatical/style errors. I wrote a story, thinking it would be okay, but I'm not too happy with it. It got long and drags out. But now I don't have the time to change it, or write something different. 



In the 90s when I was in my teens I went on a school trip to St. Petersburg in Russia. We had the luck of knowing someone there who not only got us places where we could stay, but also got us cheap or even free tickets to concerts, operas and ballets.


One night after seeing a ballet performance we were headed home. We quickly got on the bus because it was cold outside, the temperature during the day was usually around -10C, and dropped to -20C at night. There were seven of us, six teens and an adult.


As we sat on the bus we looked out and after a while didn’t really recognize where we were. We figured we should just sit tight. The bus kept going and while we remained hopeful it would resume its normal course. We eventually realized that this bus, which we had taken several times before, must be taking a different route during the late hours. By the time we had realized this, the stately buildings of the city centre had made way to plainer buildings. We were far from home.


We managed to ask one of the other passengers how we might get back into to the city. Despite not speaking any Russian, and the passenger speaking nearly no English, we managed to find out that we should stay on the bus until we got to a metro stop and then take the metro back to the centre.  So we stayed on the bus even longer.


Eventually the brightly lit metro stop appeared and we all got off the bus. Unfortunately as we walked up to the building we noticed that it was only lit on the outside. We could see only darkness through the windows, and the doors were locked.


We looked around and there was very little to see. There was the metro building, the road, and a bunch of large, grey high-rises in the distance. It was dark, it was cold, it was late, none of us spoke Russian and none of us had cell phones.


There was nothing else for us to do than to check at what time the bus would come going the way back into the city, which turned out to be almost an hour later. So we decided we should start walking back, to get closer home, but mostly to just keep warm.


As we were walking we realized things were even worse than we thought. The city is surrounded by a river. This river connects the Baltic Sea with the inland waterways and because of this it is used by freight ships. To allow those ships to pass, all bridges over the river open for an hour each night. And we were on the wrong side of the river. So now we were in the cold, dark night not dressed for the biting cold and if we didn’t somehow manage to get back to the right side of the river in time we’d be stuck waiting for an extra hour.


We picked up the pace, arguing among ourselves how we could best get home. Someone suggested we should try to get to the distant high-rises to see if we could get help there, someone else suggested we should stop any car that might pass, someone suggested running. But the buildings looked hostile, there was no traffic and were hardly all in such shape that we could run for some unspecified distance and get to the bridges in time. The arguments continued.


But then we saw we were nearing another bus stop. A bus stop that wasn’t deserted. We picked up the pace and found two university students standing there who laughed at our story of peril. They explained that they’d hail whatever cars would come by and get them to drive us into town. We explained that we had had the same idea, but during the twenty minutes we had walked we hadn’t seen a single car drive by. The students told us not to worry and not ten seconds later a car came by, and while our saviors were haggling for a fair price for us a second car came.


Within just a few minutes we went from certainty that we’d all at least get frostbite to hurling down the deserted streets of St. Petersburg, headed for home.


These days I try to help whenever I see someone who seems lost.


This is not an easy one.... Let see...

(Sorry for the bad verbs + weird sentences :) ) 

----------------------------


It's a rainy day.

With a lot of wind. 

6:00PM.

A men walk outside his office.

He's getting home.

He forgot his umbrella. 

He raise his shoulders, looking at the sky. And then lets out a long sigh.

Walking home, his face is not sad, neither happy.

Just tired. 

Maybe a little bit melancholy.

Today, it's his birthday.

Nobody is waiting for him at home. 

Nobody sent him birthday wishes at the office. 

Nobody knew.

Arriving close to his home, the man grabs his keys in his pocket and opens the door.

After opening the door, he saw an letter on the floor. 

A question mark appears on his face. 

Who could send him a letter?

He grabs the letter and open it. 

A smile is starting to shown on his face.

It's a drawing of a cake.

From his little niece, and a birthday wishes from his sister.


On that birthday night, the lonely man went to bed with a smile on his face. 


His niece and sister may live on the opposite part of the world, they never forget him.  


Happy birthday.


What happens if someone responds, but doesn't follow your prompt? Do they get dropped still?

 

You get a lot of fun (or absurd) stories when playing Dungeons and Dragons. People go to great lengths to detail their characters, and create ludicrous backgrounds to roleplay. 

 

My all time favorite character was a royal prince who was sent on a mission by his father, which was more or less an exile. Unfortunately, this prince was too stupid to realize it. He took to his impossible quest with zeal. His companions during the campaign were servants and squires to him, nothing more. He didn't even bother to learn their names, but instead referred to them as "peasant", "farmer", or "plebian". Ten minutes into the campaign, everyone hated this character. An hour or so into the campaign, the group finally reached the first dungeon. As they were descending down the steps, the prince rolled a critical failure and ended up tumbling down the thousand steps, and impaling himself on his own spear. The rest of the group left him there, cheering for the fortunate event.

 

The dungeon master who ran that game now includes the prince as the first enemy new groups run into when running the campaign. Despite being hated, he's been immortalized in the campaign, while the other characters have faded from memory.


Once upon a time there was a writing prompt. Every day it would arrive with new and exciting requests.


Then there was a big storm.


The next day it appeared again but it was just an empty shell.


One day, the old dog got up from his bed and thought, "There's more to it than this." He slumped down the stairs, squeezed through the doggy door out into the backyard, and looked at the woods. For the first time in his life, he figured there was a place out there, that the world didn't end at the line of shadows cast by the trees. So he plodded into the woods and never came back.


Awesome :)


I had visited some friends and it was time to go home. I went home with another friend of mine. On the way home he said we had to stop at a mansion and because he had dropped his flashlight there exploring it the other night. We went to the mansion and went down the gravel road. We saw a white masked figure standing there. My friend flipped off the light and the figure vanished as we flipped the light back on. We continued on and saw two figures wearing the white mask this time. Instead of flipping of the light we just watched them. They scattered off in different directions.

We continued down the road and made it to the mansion finally. My friend got out and said he needed to get out and look for the flashlight. I waited in the car feeling safer. I just felt extreme terror waiting there. I got even more fearful for my life when I heard a chainsaw revving up in the distance. He finally got back with his stupid flashlight and said we needed to leave those people were after him.


We gunned it back down the gravel road and saw someone laying there. My friend decided he would get out and move the person so we could leave. He walked towards the body to move it and it shrieked convulsed and knocked my friend to the ground. The other people in the masks gathered around him and started kicking him on the ground. One of the masked figures walked up to me in the passenger seat and all I could think was "I'm going to die".


Flashlight beams enveloped me around, then turned off the masked figures took off their masks slowly and revealed their similar faces. It was my friends playing a joke on me all they said was happy Halloween. My friend was also in on it. They had had elaborately planned the whole thing to scare me. It was Halloween night. I had cursed at all of them after but there were no hard feelings.


0____o


Once there was an ambitious young archer who heard of a great stag in the king's woods which would grant wishes.


Knowing entering the forest without the king's blessing would likely result in his execution, his greed got the best of him. He entered the woods.


Turns out the stag did exist, but had died 50 years beforehand. The young man died of exposure waiting for him to show up.


The end!


The M&M's


A story that has stuck with me through life.


I remember when I was in elementary school and there was that kid that everyone made fun of. He was the smelly kid. I would watch the kids torment him and I laughed along with them. One day when my mom was meeting me at school for our walk home, I noticed she was carrying a bag of chocolate M&M’s.


I immediately thought they were for me and I said to my her, “MOM! I want some of those!”


And she said very calmly to me, “No, these aren’t for you”. We stood staring at the school doors and she was waiting. I didn’t understand what was going on.


“MOM! Why aren’t we walking home!”


She said, “Just a second, Jen. Be patient!”


Out comes the smelly kid. My mom walks over, calmly talks to the kid. His eyes cast low at the ground. She hands him the M&Ms and they share a smile. I’m very confused. Does she know him? Why is she talking to him?


And then we start walking home.


I ask my mom, “Why did you give HIM then M&M’s, Mom? No one likes him! He smells bad.”


Mom said, “Everyone needs someone to be nice to them sometimes. You have to see it from his point of view. Do you like it when your older brother teases and aggravates you?”


I gave her a sullen look and said “no”, while pouting.


“Well how would you feel if your brother did that to you all day while you all day school AND while you were home?”


“I wouldn’t like it.”


Mom said, “Well, You should remember that the next time kids are being mean to him. Put yourself in his shoes.”


Something to remember.


I hope you are not expecting an original one ;)


Baby shoes for sale, never worn. 


Today my friends and I sat in The Florence (a lovely pub in Herne Hill) and played an awful game called THE LOGO GAME which is akin to having your toenails pulled off with pliers. 


The end. 


Rats, might have missed the "deadline" on this one, but here goes anyway :)

I'm terrible at creative projects without predefined boundaries. I always end up with a way to ambitious behemoth that's impossible to finish. So instead of the novella-sized monster I attempted to create most of the past day, here's a shorter story about these frustrations. How meta!


The young lad ran his hand through his sweaty hear. Like most of his adolescent life, he'd fallen victim again to his desire to over-accomplish the task at hand. He moved his other hand from his now cold cup of untouched coffee to shield his tired eyes from the burning summer sun. The stack of notes that had exponentially started growing on his desk now laid shuffled on the floor like autumn leaves, yet the patiently blinking cursor on his computer screen had remained unmoved for what seemed like hours. A clearly annoyed knock on the door informed him that dinner would now probably be situated in the microwave instead of on the homely family table. The lad took a long contemplating look at the clock hanging from the far wall, hesitantly dragged the disappointing document from his desktop to the trash and closed the lid of his laptop. Slowly getting from his chair, while leaving the room without turning off any lights, he felt surprisingly relieved, but nonetheless feared that he would continue making the same mistakes in the future.  


Ha, nice :) I'll send you day 6 now - you made the deadline.


i spent a year trying to get a particular job.


then a few months ago i got that job. for most of the year i was unemployed, and it was one of the best experiences in my adult live. i learned more, and did more, and met more people, and was in better physical shape than any time in my life.


now i've got the job, and i'm not sure whether it's right for me. and i don't know whether that's because it's not right for me, or it's just new and i'm getting used to it, or if my epistemic position (which i explored in depth over the Year of Doubt/unemployment) is just too weird for me to be in the position i'm in.


anyway, i think it's okay. but i'm unsure about where i fit in at my job, and i know that i spend a *lot* of time doing things that are applicable to our work but aren't the work itself. and i'm lucky that my job affords me that opportunity, but i'm unsure whether the relationship will be as fruitful & long lasting as i may have hoped.


s


Oh, the bar is rising! :)


So I'll write a story about this game, GeoGuessr. Very simple idea -- it drops you somewhere into Google Streetview, and you have to guess where you are. But how greatly does it work!


Probably everybody had used Streetview hundreds of times. Usually you drop in, make a few steps and close the pane. Here, everything is different. You are alone somewhere at the road, you can't jump to another spot, and all you've left to do, is to fly forward, mile after mile, until you find any sign of geographical attribution. This rewards you with this special feeling of endless driving through an unknown land. Scouting around for precious details, letting the hurry do, you learn the place and feel as if you had really been there. It's really remarkable, how a slight change in the structure of your attention can give you totally different experience of essentially the same thing.


I wonder if someday Google will build an army of robo-mosqitoes, flying around with their tiny cameras, and we'll have an "Earthview" of the whole planet. What's more, we'll have it archived for each year (and minute), able to do time travel anywhere we want. And all the history will split on the time before the Full Coverage, and after. Oh shit, that was before the Coverage, now I need to go to the library like prehistoric humans :). And if you're young enough, you'll be able to show your kids how you've met your spouse. Listen son, it was 30 years ago, at this corner... look, there she is, in her white dress! Yes, at that time cars had wheels and couldn't fly. It wasn't that bad, by the way! 


Back to the game, I learned some nice new things. First, most of places where people live resemble each other. Second, most of the countries have their unique features, which are hard to explain but which you can recognize. As I live i Russia, I could recognize it from the first sight, just looking at the empty road and the trees around. Third, most of the places were simply amazing. Now I really want to hug the whole planet. I'll start by buying the car and traveling around in person, driving mile after mile and contemplating the clouds.


The other day, a penguin was chilling on an iceberg. Another penguin approached it, took a look and said, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo." The first one replied, "How do you know I'm not?"


Once upon a time:

There was a girl who became suspicious of people who don't like corn, coconut or ice cream.  She still is.  She also regards triskaidekaphobia with suspicion; surely we agree that 13 is the noblest number and above such an indignity?




23% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day six :)



Today I’m going to ask you what your dad believes in, and I figured I'd share the same about mine. My dad’s a mathematician and computer security guy. He’s passionate about studying and learning. He’s frustrated that I consider myself bad at math, and thinks he could have gotten me to love math if he had focused on it more. He loves to teach, and is really good at it. Someone once told him “Dr. Bell, whatever titles you get, whatever you accomplish, in the end you’re a teacher at heart.”


He believes that people who insist on being addressed by their titles (such as Dr) are insecure and/or new to it are testing out the novelty. He doesn’t believe in studying for standardized testing - he thinks it should be a test of what you know, now how you can game the system. He loves Richard Feynman, as do I. There’s a book called “The Joy Of Finding Things Out” which might as well be my dad’s official motto.


What does your dad believe in?


Let's start with what my dad doesn't believe in: microwaves. (I mean microwave ovens rather than the form of electromagnetic radiation. Those microwaves are ok.)


He believes that people are interesting. He believes that the things that people are interested in are almost always worth hearing about. He believes in listening to people.


He believes in driving very carefully when other people are in the car with him.


My dad. I think my dad belive in hard work. He work hard all is live as an accoutant "comptable". In february, he just retired. He work hard all is life to be able to travel after, and it's what my parents are doing right now. Travelling all the US, with the little english that they know, and they love it. 


He was always there for me, when et where ever I needed him. He also have a good sense of humors and always showed us to be abel to laugh about a bad situation. Take it in the good way, there is always a solution. Give the best of you in everything that you do.


My Dad works as a consultant. He travels to a ton of different companies giving presentations on how clients compare with other companies in terms of IT costs, server setup, things like that. 


He believes in not molding data to fit the narrative, and answering questions confidently (even if you aren't sure yourself). He told me that it's better to say something is 'x' definitively and come back later and say it's actually 'y' than pause and say I don't know. 


My dad believes in going to the big game or the big show, wherever and whenever it is, and getting the best seats he can for it. "Life's too short for bad seats," he says.



He belives in Jesus. He also believes in helping those less fortunate and not wasting energy arguing when you don't have much to win. 


My dad was born on Friday the 13th and has had alot of bad luck, but also good luck despite the bad luck.


He's has his nose broken in an accident when he was 18 that also resulted in the loss of his best friend. Not because he lost his life, but because their parents sued each other. From that he told me that your relationships with your friends can change at any moment. He told me when I was in High school to show me that my friends now will most likely not be my friends later. Which at the time, they were my life. I think he was trying to tell me not to dwell on the past so I wouldn't miss opportunities in the future. As well as "life isn't fair, so get use to it," which was a constant conversation for us.


My dad has crohn's disease, where they did exploratory surgery when he was younger that left him without a belly button and a crazy zig zaggy scar. It had been in remission for most of my life, but he had a scare around the time I was about to finish high school and he had to be fed by a tube for a few months.


He had throat cancer but caught early and now no trace. 


He had a brain tumor that was thankfully on the outside of his brain, not tightly connected to anything. My now husband met my dad for the first time the day before surgery. My dad still showed up at the door, with wires coming off his head, holding a wooden baseball bat when he greeted him. (This was common practice when I brought any boy home). My dad recovered from this surgery and has no issues, thankfully.


He's had hip surgery on both hips early in age due to the medicines he was taking for his crohn's. He was limping all around a Mexican resort when I was getting married but still drew a crowd of laughter where every he was hanging out. He wasn't going to let it get to him.


My dad was also in a horrific car accident that shattered his left leg, broke many other bones, which left him the hospital for almost half a year. He now walks around with a lift on one shoe. If you let him, he will proudly tell you all about the cool ways you can modify a shoe. And he gets around without even a cane.


So this is why I think my dad the unluckiest lucky person alive. And he's kept his humor throughout all of this, which is so very important. I think that's why I laugh so much myself. 


"So even though Life isn't Fair, Jen, you really can't take it so seriously."


My Dad believes in God, which is something that baffles me since he is quite rationalist with the rest of his life. He is scared of entrepreneurship and has worked in someone else's company all of his life (at C-level positions for the last 20 years). He hates that I haven't finished university because if my company was to fail (see about being scared of entrepreneurship) I would not have a title to get a job with. The fact that the title I could get would be a MoS in Biology and that I have spent the last 17 years working in IT do not look like a problem to him.


Ack! I'm late. My apologies. 


My dad believes in self determination, I think. He's always been loathe to offer criticism or even much in the way of advice, though I know he has feelings about what I do. 


He also believes in not missing out on your life. He worked hard when I was young, and just as his business became really successful my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. She eventually died, when I was 12. My dad was crushed, and I think that since then he's regretted his absence - though in reality he was just a normal guy and a good dad. 


Anyway, he's always pushing me to take more time off, which I think comes from that in some way. 


My dad was a luthier and a crafter of harspichords and viols. He started as a viol player, and after some time began dreaming of building his own instruments. Still in the USSR, he managed to get drawings of viols and harpsichords from abroad, wrote programs to calculate the precise shapes of the instruments, built his own machines and finally achieved what he wanted. He also was curious about computers, and in 1991 he bought a machine called "MK-88", a Soviet copy of IBM PC9 XT -- one of the first machines available. I still remember a green book by Peter Norton called "MS-DOS" -- he handed it to me and suggested I'd learn the system. And I did! (I was 9 then). The next book was about Pascal, and when I compiled my first program I was amazed by the power I had at my service. I could make the computer do stuff that would take months to calculate by hand! Then I fell in love with computers and it never ended.


My father believed that you should live your life by setting goals and achieving them; and he demonstrated perfectly how seemingly impossible things come to reality if you are persistent enough. He believed in the power of trust and the word giving, always keeping his promises and teaching me to do the same. He believed in big art, and probably the best movie matching his views is the brilliant "All the mornings of the world", a film about French 17th century viol player, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. "All the mornings of the world never return..."


My dad believes in equality and giving everyone a fair chance. He believes that there is good in everyone, and in his work he has taught the less fortunate to become more skillful and independent people. My dad believes that his children know what's best for them, even if he doesn't always understand.


My Dad's a great teacher too; our family is constantly reminded by his former students who reach out from across the world.  He's also a great doctor and colleague, as his patients and coworkers remind us.  One recently said to me: "Just like everybody loves Raymond (TV show), everybody loves [my Dad]".  He believes in being principled, all the time.




28% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day seven.


How are you at a party? What role to do you play?

Who are you to your friends?

How does your family see you?






I'm usually a quiet listener, but someone who will drop teasing jokes occasionally during a story. 


I'm a sassy computer nerd that knows way too much random trivia who doesn't go out much. 


For my family, I'm the IT department. 


How are you at a party? What role to do you play?


I'm the one out on the porch or the balcony, depending on what kind of party it is. I'm not usually looking bummed or unapproachable. I'm equally content in engaged conversation with anyone else at the party who wants that or looking at the view with my drink, waiting for someone to join me.

 

Who are you to your friends?


The serious one, but it amuses them.

 

How does your family see you?


Extreme but stable. They’re starting to believe me.


Probably the quiet one. Sitting somewhere and talking with a good friend.


I'd like to think that I'm the down to earth guy, who – once in a while – makes slightly crazy choices.


They're proud of how well I'm doing. Everything is going better than any of us could have hoped for a decade back.


How are you at a party?


First of all, I always wear something awesome. It helps my confidence levels and sometimes it makes good opening conversation. It's also rule number 2 of the 10 Steps of Being a Badass: "Dress like you fucking give a damn."


How I act it depends on who's party it is. If its someone I don't really know that well, I'll wander all over every room and watch people. I'll interact with some, but I'll be really shy.


If it's one of my close friends, we greet each other with big joyous shouting of our names, arms raised, followed by individual hugs by each person. It's the best welcome you'll ever get, walking into a room with everyone genuinely happy to see you. I'll jump around from friend to friend, like a hostess and make sure I talk to everyone I want to. 


What role do you play?


I have a large group of friends back home in Dallas. Of that large group there's a core of my two best guy friends, they are like my brothers. One of them is a master at talking to people. 

My other best friend is one of those people that would kill himself being there for you. The three of us are like Larry, Curry, and Moe. Between the three of us, we can plan and start an event by the seat of our pants. This is how our weekends were usually planned and it was always last minute. Darren usually explains out in detail the masterplan. He has this trick of making whatever it is that he's thought of, sound like it's the best idea in the world. I rely on the fact that he's extremely picky, cause I know it won't be a crap idea. Nelson will help gather all the things and I am the one that usually tells everyone. Then, with music playing the background, will set up everything. Usually it's a "family dinner" (which is a large group dinner with all the friends), so we're all cooking, chopping, cleaning, etc harmoniously. 


I'm this weird mix of a tomboy and a glamorous girlie girl. Most of my friends are guys and when they started dating really awesome girl friends, I acquired them as friends too. Since most of everyone is married or in a serious relationship, these girls are some of my best friends as well. I became the first girl that befriended them in "the group" so I feel like I've had a close relationship with each of them, getting to know them, making them feel welcome. Many times in the early stages, I was the decoy that would get the girl to hang out again. Make it seem like just a friendly get together, then my dude friend could suavely put on the moves. 


How does your family see you?


I'm the odd one. It started slowly with my crazy imaginative games, making my family watch my weirdo indie movies, to wearing clothes that stand out, to only buying things that were green, to dying my hair. My parents played on my gullible-ness, passion and used it to rile me up just for their entertainment. They once grounded me without an end date. I wrote up the most legal sounding and looking document, outlining the terms of my "groundation" and made a contract that we could both agree on terms to terminate the groundation. 


My mom has a name for me, she calls me her "Artsy darling daughter". It's not that my family isn't creative, my dad grew up as a photographer before switching to software engineer. But I was the one who "wouldn't play The Game," as my brother would say. "The Game" is the things you do to make your life easier, even if you don't want to do it, in order to succeed at the game of life. This could be as simple as sending mom a card and giving her a call so she doesn't later go crazy calling you, sending emails, writing notes on social networks because she hasn't heard from you. To going into a career that is sensible and allows you to make money easily, where you don't struggle. I worked extra hard NOT to play it, I felt like it was compromising who I was.  My older brother followed these rules and is very successful. I don't think he really likes what he does, but its a job which allows him to buy things he wants and for his family, a house in the suburbs, a weekend house in the middle of nowhere and all the things that are considered "successful".


It may have taken me longer to get where I am by not playing The Game, but I feel like I'm doing well now. You can get caught up on whether or not it's good for you to play The Game, but I knew I wouldn't be happy. "This is not my beautiful house... this is not my beautiful wife!"


Even with all of this, I know my family loves me, and that's the most important part. 



I feel like I’m starting to know you better than most people, and that’s awesome. Or at least certain parts, anyway. Thanks for these awesome responses.


This project really lends itself to alot of self evaluation. I'm really enjoying it, thanks for doing it!


(Also, whoa so many typos & grammar mistakes.. It's charming though, right? ;)  )


I’m glad, thanks!


I usually notice grammar/typos, but with these I’m just sort of absorbing them all. Didn’t even notice :)


Relaxed and progressively inebriated. I usually man the barbecue. 


A problem fixer. 


A rogue who does what he pleases. 


man, these are tough questions.


i mean, it really depends on the context. the way i really like being is the Activity Instigator. most of the parties i hold are big activity days - go on a 15 mile walk, play sports, run around, cook like 30 lobsters. big things, and collaborative. 


at someone else's party i'm usually trying to shake things up a *little.* but it's really limited - the most reliable way is to, instead of bringing a bottle of wine, bring something weird like some Colombian anisette, or maybe some Alize. most times people are somewhat amused but mostly like "uh, thanks."





I'm disturbingly quiet at a party where I think the people are boring, but if people seem interesting, I'll join in the conversation like it's nobody's business. I'm the one with stories from living around the world and working weird jobs. I'm the friend who's usually not present, not in the same country, which makes it impossible to be close to anyone. I'm the fun-to-see-every-once-in-a-while friend. To my family, I'm the crazy youngest sibling/child who will never grow up.


Hey, shouldn't you answer every question you ask, too?  You can't just pick and choose which ones to answer, y'know.


How are you at a party? What role to do you play? - Usually sociable and sometimes playing "co-host" if it's a really close friend having the party.


Who are you to your friends? - The blunt, crazy/adventorous one; sometimes a connector.


How does your family see you? - art/fashion/design obsessed, stubborn, off kilter but usually in an interesting way.


Ha, ok here we go. You’re pushy, which is awesome!


At a party, I want to talk to one person and see their soul. It means I’m not very good at mingling, but when I make friends with someone, it goes deep. It’s either unsettling or intoxicating, depending on if a person is into that sort of thing.


To my friends I’m prolific. I’m always making stuff.


Family trusts me. They know I’m stubborn but they’ve learned to trust my instinct.




Photojournalism day




























Good to hear from you yesterday, and I hope you're having a lovely day

today. You (and everyone else) responded, so our list hasn't changed!



Several years ago I was working as an interaction designer at frog

design, alongside a variety of other roles including developers and

visual designers.


In a move that my friends agree is a very "me" thing to do, I sent an

open-ended email to the studio that began:


I wish interaction designers __________________


And it was fascinating. I ended up with a ton of responses. A

developer asked me to send the same one about developers, so I told

him to send it out himself! He did. He got a bunch of responses as

well. I'm pretty sure we also did one for "visual designers", or we

just collapsed into the same old debate about how isn't design just

design? Doesn't a visual designer know interaction design and vice

versa? (that would be nice, but no.)


So much came out of this activity.


One: I didn't know why I was asking beyond dumb curiosity. I don't

think very many steps forward with this sort of thing, I just ask

something provocative and get out of the way. 100% of the time I'm

surprised by what happens, so I've given up trying to direct or

predict it. But it's always something to learn from, and therefore

something to keep doing.


Two: People practically jumped for joy at a chance to be involved. So

many responses came in, and we printed them all out and posted them on

the wall for everyone to discuss. It was cathartic and opened some

interesting and important discussions.


Three: I got in trouble with HR. They basically said they liked my

pluck, but they didn't like that I was stirring up discussion like

this with a plan. They wanted to know what my end game was. They

wanted me to know that I was setting up false expectations that the

newly discussed issues would somehow how be addressed.


The more I think about it, the more I roll the conversations over in

my mind, the more I'm convinced of two things. 1) They were doing

their job, and 2) it was ridiculous. I guess technically they had to

check in with me. But it's such a fearful way to respond. You can't

create if you're scared. This is basic brain science!


Let's talk about The Long Talk.


I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of it, but I do know it's one

of my favorite projects ever. I ask questions and I get these amazing

responses. And as people drop off, it's getting easier and easier to

get to know everyone. And at a pretty deep level, too!


I don't know what's up next, but I do know that I'm having a lot of

fun and I hope you are too. I've started getting more and more

questions about my own answers to these questions. I'll see what I can

come up with, stay tuned :)


Today's prompt is taking the "I wish" question and making it a little

more positive. Please finish these sentences:


I like it when men ___________

I like it when women __________

I like it when city planners __________

I like it when tourists __________

When I'm traveling, I like cities that ___________

I like when kids ______________

I like it when adults _______________

I like it when the elderly ________________

I like it when friends _________________

I like when the weather _______________

I like when designers _______________

I like when co-workers _________________


While you're thinking through these, you're probably thinking of

people in your life that do these things. So there's one last

question.


I told _______________ that I liked how they _____________.


You can make someone's entire day with a sincere thank you or

compliment. Share one and let me know how it goes.





Jon


Today's prompt is taking the "I wish" question and making it a little

more positive. Please finish these sentences:


I like it when men ___________


listen


I like it when women __________


don’t give a fuck


I like it when city planners __________


are ok with their work being so good it’s invisible


I like it when tourists __________


are excited about being tourists


When I'm traveling, I like cities that ___________


are never more than two minutes from a quiet street


I like when kids ______________


correct adults


I like it when adults _______________


listen


I like it when the elderly ________________


don’t give a fuck


I like it when friends _________________


call out of the blue and say let’s hang out now


I like when the weather _______________


makes everything quiet. Some weather can do that e.g. low sun


I like when designers _______________


are ok with their work being so good it’s invisible


I like when co-workers _________________


use exclamation marks in their written correspondence


While you're thinking through these, you're probably thinking of

people in your life that do these things. So there's one last

question.


I told _______________ that I liked how they _____________.


I will tell Ed I like him calling randomly and seeing if I want to watch the football.


You can make someone's entire day with a sincere thank you or

compliment. Share one and let me know how it goes.


Hi Jon 


I'm glad I made it again. I had planned on taking more pictures, but Things happened. 



I like it when men ___________

I like it when women __________

Okay. So I was thinking about this and I am struggling to come up with something specific I like when men or women do. I don't want to imply that I'm blind to gender or anything like that, but when I stop to think what I'd like people of either gender to do I can't really come up with anything notable. I guess I somehow managed to do that with the other groups mentioned below. I don't know what that says about me. 



I like it when city planners think about the context things get placed in. 

I like it when tourists move along. Or blend in, I guess. The problem with tourists is thy they probably don't register as tourists for me unless they're in the way, stepping into traffic etc. 

When I'm traveling, I like cities that have some variance. I like seeing history but also how people who live there live their lives. 

I like when kids don't have to worry about growing up. I don't hang around kids much. 

I like it when adults use the agency they have. 

I like it when the elderly aren't alone.

I like it when friends know you better than you know yourself. 

I like when the weather isn't too hot. When it's cold you can add layers to get warmer, when it's hot at some point you can't remove layers to get cooler. There's a Swedish saying I like which roughy translates too "there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes", but it mostly works when it's cold or raining or similar. 

I like when designers solve problems. Making things look pretty is a skill and (visually) delighting people can be a goal, but I'd think there are few situations where it's the only one. 

I like when co-workers help each other. And know what they are doing. 


I told a colleague that I liked how they handled a difficult client.





Today's mail reminds me of some psychological testing I had to do once. I'm not sure what the name of it was, but basically a list of beginnings of sentences or sentence fragments which I had to complete, and then the combined answers would say something about how I viewed myself others and the rest of the world. It wasn't as positively framed as your list though.


Now that I think about it this whole thing is a bit like psychotherapy in that it's a bit one-directional. I still hardly know anything about you, while you get to know more and more about us. 



Hope you are having or have had a good day!


Björn 




I like it when men treat women with respect

I like it when women treat men with respect

I like it when city planners build around landscapes instead of steamrolling them.

I like it when tourists are knowledgeable about the surrounding area

When I'm traveling, I like cities that are on the water

I like when kids smile

I like it when adults are polite and courteous

I like it when the elderly go out of their way to meet people

I like it when friends work together to help a common friend in need

I like when the weather rains

I like when designers don't follow flashy trends

I like when co-workers crack jokes


I told roommate that I liked how they always clean up the dishes after everyone and never mention it at parties



I like it when men listen.

I like it when women listen.

I like it when city planners listen.

I like it when tourists participate.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that can be explored on foot.

I like when kids play.

I like it when adults play.

I like it when the elderly play.

I like it when friends listen.

I like when the weather fits the music.

I like when designers teach.

I like when co-workers help.


I told Ariel that I liked how she sings. She appreciated it.


I like it when people show empathy for others.

I like it when city planners make less curvy roads.

I like it when tourists stop up, appreciates and take pictures of the most common things.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that has a lot of old, small and less traveled streets, with cozy restaurants and a friendly neighborhood.

I like when kids enjoy their youth, role plays or when they're simply innocent.

I like it when adults are less serious.

I like it when the elderly tells stories from

I like it when friends are there for me, or when they take initiative to do something they know I want to do.

I like when the weather is just above 20 °C, and either clear with a nice breeze or raining and hailing with high humidity.

I like when designers reveal their brilliance by making definitive tradeoffs to make a product that is actually better.

I like when co-workers keep things professional.



The last one I'll keep for myself, but they did smile. :)


I like it when men just treat me like another person.


I like it when women are friendly instead of guarded and snobby.


I like it when city planners do positive things for the people that live in those cities and make them glad they choose that city to live.


I like it when tourists go do things that aren't touristy so they can really experience the place they are visiting.


When I'm traveling, I like cities that have good food, ways to get around (easily renting bikes or transit or ubers), and have things to do!


I like when kids go outside and play rather than playing video games.


I like it when adults are observant to their surroundings and don't act like bumbling idiots.


I like it when the elderly tell stories about their lives and enjoy the life they still have.


I like it when friends remember the small things.


I like when the weather is varied.


I like when designers aren't arrogant


I like when co-workers become friends



While you're thinking through these, you're probably thinking of

people in your life that do these things. So there's one last

question.


I told a girl on the bus that I liked how her cat purse.


You can make someone's entire day with a sincere thank you or

compliment. Share one and let me know how it goes. <-- I totally agree with that statement.


////


um that last sentence didn't make since but I like kinda like it.


It SHOULD read:


I told a girl on the bus that I liked her cat purse.


You could also read it as:


I told a girl on the bus that I liked how her cat purrs.





which could be taken THE COMPLETELY wrong way.




Puns! I never thought about the purrs/purse dynamic.


Ever heard of the racy thing Johnny Carson said to Zsa Zsa Gabor about her cat on stage? It's considered one of the best stories on live tv ... But it never happened. A collective dream that society shares, but is positive really happened.


It started because of Jane Fonda!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3IuPsY5CTE


JANE!


I like it when men look sharp

I like it when women don't sabotage themselves

I like it when city planners think of pedestrians and bikes and put a lot of trees and take care of them

I like it when tourists are around ;)

When I'm traveling, I like cities that let me go on my own pace and share with me what their inhabitants do

I like when kids have fun without being overly annoying

I like it when adults have fun without being overly annoying

I like it when the elderly have fun without being overly annoying

I like it when friends are happy

I like when the weather is not too hot or to cold in my city and gets hotter when getting to the beach and colder up the mountains

I like when designers understand the budgetary implications of their decisions 

I like when co-workers are nice to each other


I told my girlfriend (that I liked how they) that she makes me proud of her everyday.


I like it when men are excited to be excited

I like it when women are excited to be excited too

I like it when city planners consider externalities

I like it when tourists wear cameras around and get in my way

When I'm traveling, I like cities that i have friends in who like walking

I like when kids ask me questions

I like it when adults don't act like they know what they're like

I like it when the elderly are physically active

I like it when friends want to do stuff together

I like when the weather changes

I like when designers don't act like design is a science

I like when co-workers give me feedback


I told my girlfriend that I liked how she makes me feel


Hey Jon,


I’m a grumpy guy (I’m sure you noticed on Twitter), so this will sure force me to rattle my brain :)

I’d sure love to hear you insights into the whole project at some point. I can’t even begin to imagine what others would possible reply to some of these questions. I told my wife about The Long Talk, and she said not to stop replying under any circumstances, so I guess you’re stuck with me for a while. I don’t think it’s a competitive thing. I guess she just supports any project that forces me to open up and talk to people a bit.


My list:


I like it when men admit defeat. There’s way too many who succumb to that primal urge to emerge the victor. I’d prefer to work with someone who can see the error in their ideas and learn from it, than someone who will continue to defend them.

I like it when women realise that they’re allowed to be ambitious as well. I have tremendous respect for women who aren’t afraid to take charge or spark some controversy.

I like it when city planners value nature and open spaces. It’s a cliché response, but Belgium’s an absolute nightmare in that regard. I can’t remember the last time I visited a Belgian city that didn’t consider a dying tree on every other street corner sufficient to claim a “green” label.

I like it when tourists ask locals for suggestions instead of simply consulting a guide. You’ll never find any hidden gems unless you go looking for them.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that are relatively unpopular or hardly known. I’m absolutely no city-tripper, so I prefer to stay in those that are small and quiet. To me, 90% of the value of travel comes from getting uncomfortable and exploring places and cultures that are strange and foreign.

I like it when kids are curious. I’m seeing a lot of parents being overprotective of their children, isolating them from the real world as much as possible. I love hearing their sometimes absurd questions. They see the world in a whole different way, and sometimes manage to catch me off guard and force me to broaden my horizon myself. I’m newlywed, so kids of my own aren’t in the picture yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if I changed my opinion when that time comes.

I like it when adults act like kids. Mostly for the same reasons as the previous question. Is it odd for me to admit that I ran around the house yesterday wearing a cardboard box for a helmet?

I like it when the elderly refuse to “be old”. They can be full of life when given the chance.

I like it when friends drop by unannounced. There are few thing that make me feel more appreciated.

I like when the weather is cold. No sugarcoating of insightful reply from me there. I’m absolutely not a summer person. I’m a sucker for melancholy, so a quiet snow-covered forest is pretty much heaven for me.

I like when designers aim to impress their audience instead of their peers. I can rant for hours about the modern design industry and its shifting priorities. But the intentions here were to keep things positive. I like to frequently check up on how less tech-minded people are using their devices nowadays (handing around an iPad in a nursing home can be an eye opener). There are a lot of highly regarded interface designs that actually perform poorly with novice users.

I like when co-workers suggest ideas on things that could make the office a nicer place to work. I’m a newbie when it comes to managing people, let alone a company, so I’d rather not have people treat me like I know exactly what I’m doing :)



I told my wife that I liked how she slaps me around the ears sometimes (figuratively). I can be quite the stubborn guy and easily get worked up about things. It’s nice to have someone remind me about the important things in life.


Cheers,


Sam


I like it when men are in control, able to handle difficult situations firmly and without hesitation.


I like it when women are irradiating beauty around them, invisibly doing hundreds of small things, making any space or task more humane and harmonious. I'm not sure if it's polite to write this, because as I can tell from the internet in the english-speaking realm women-related themes are like a minefield, where an inaccurate step can turn out to be sexism or chauvinism. But I really think women are capable of doing fantastic things that most men can't do, and our world needs these things desperately. Beauty and harmony are among them.


I like it when city planners make public spaces where people from different ages social groups can meet: parents with kids, sporty guys and girls, old people playing chess, hipsters doing their hipster thing. For each of these groups it's great fun to watch another ones.


I like it when tourists don't hesitate to dive in local ways of life, sharing their feelings and surprise.


When I'm traveling, I like cities that give me possibility to 'walk where my eyes look', and be great at every direction.


I like when kids are smart and curious.


I like it when adults are not too serious about themselves.


I like it when the elderly do nasty jokes and use strong words :))


I like it when friends call and suggest to meet with no exact purpose.


I like when the weather is calm and lifting my soul up in a way I want to die this very moment, because it's so great.


I like when designers get their inspiration from deep sympathy and compassion to other people.


I like when co-workers don't explain me why it's not possible to do a new thing, but instead try to invent ways to do it. :)



I told my mom recently that she was a really great mom for me when I was a kid: beautiful, caring, and singing songs. Like in fairy tales.


I like it when men wear bright colors.

I like it when women belly laugh.

I like it when city planners dedicate some city space for things that are just fun, like an outdoor xylophone by the seashore. (this exists in my old hometown)

I like it when tourists don't stand in the middle of the sidewalk.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that have visible street culture and good book stores.

I like when kids draw and explain their insane make-believe characters.

I like it when adults don't take themselves seriously.

I like it when the elderly still have a spark.

I like it when friends have time to just chill and talk about nothing and everything.

I like when the weather is really something. Really sunny or really rainy.

I like when designers really design for their audience, not just for themselves.

I like when co-workers appreciate my work and give me feedback.


I told my mom that I liked how she writes me letters consisting of multiple fun postcards.


I like it when men are chivalrous.

I like it when women are comfortable in their own skins.

I like it when city planners provide separate lanes for trucks/lorries (as they did/do in the UAE) and bikes

I like it when tourists don't clog my path.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that have a tangible history of arts and crafts

I like when kids are well mannered.

I like it when adults and the elderly are well mannered, open minded, with stories to tell.

I like it when friends care.

I like when the weather is sunny

I like when questions are fewer, non-repetitive and bidirectional.


Oh, I don’t think these are repetitive. Although there were definitely a lot, and it was definitely one-sided :)



Okay I can't do all of them. So I just picked a few:


I like when kids _become ultra-absorbed in silent play_

 

I like it when adults _become ultra-absorbed in silent play_

 

I like it when friends _stand around and fall into silent cogitation as they try to come up with the pun that will extend some long-running game or joke, and so everyone is standing there, head down, brain just absolutely churning, running recombinations, and if observed from afar you would think they were having no fun at all, when in fact they are having the MOST fun_


And

 

I told _my old friend Dan_ that I liked how he _was my moral compass_.

 

(He knew this already; it makes him laugh every time I say it. But of course he appreciates it.)


R




No one dropped out yesterday!


There were a lot of similarities in yesterday’s responses. One I liked a lot was the insight that serendipity with friends is pretty cool. Meeting for no good reason, showing up unannounced, just letting things unfold without over-thinking it.


Here’s some information about me:


Me in interview:

http://t.co/mWZWi0Aczb


Me giving a talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjgpAVyE034


An essay I wrote:

https://medium.com/@ienjoy/mcdonalds-theory-9216e1c9da7d


Podcast and related manifesto about perfection:

http://fuckperfect.academy


An article someone wrote about my writing:

http://badyewex.com/words/2012/10/3/on-condition-of-anonymity


A book I published as a result:

http://www.blurb.com/b/4562802-the-thing-about-jetpacks


My third book will be a result of this project:

https://tinyletter.com/designdare


Today’s challenge:


Send me a book report.


Here’s a website I wrote once:

http://theinvisibl.com/


A book report! Naughty.


I read Capital by John Lanchester. It’s about people who live on a street in London where the value of houses has increased from “cheap” to “very expensive” in a generation. This means that the street comes to contain a cross-section of British classes and races in living very close proximity.


Nothing happens and they don’t interact.


Hi Jon


Thanks for the links in your last email. 




When I was younger I read a lot of books. But as time has passed I've read less and less. I still read, but it's mostly things on the net. Even a long piece is hardly anything like reading a book. I've been thinking that maybe I should get an ereader to get back into books again. And my memory is like a sieve. I know I've read several books over the last year, but I'm struggling to remember titles, let alone any meaningful amount about the contents. And I have very little time to write you today.


Now that I've gotten my excuses out of the way, I'll just write a little bit about a book I know I've read fairly recently: You are not so smart by David McRaney.


The book starts off with

The misconception: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is.

The truth: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that's OK, it keeps you sane.


I think this introduction sums up this book well. The topic of the book is ways in which humans are irrational, and does this through 48 short chapter each detailing a specific way we all delude ourselves. The topics include among others confirmation bias, groupthink and various rethoric and logical fallacies. While many of the topics were familiar to me, it was nonetheless an interesting read with clear encapsulated examples of various odd thought patterns and behaviors most of us display.McRaney shows not just the ways we trick ourselves but often also the reasons why we do so, and hopefully also ways to mitigate the problems it can cause by pointing them out.


If you enjoy reading popular science, and psychology specifically then I can recommend this book. I can also recommend the podcast by the same name (and author) over at http://youarenotsosmart.com/




Hahaha


A book I read recently that really stuck with me was "The Design of Everyday Things". Microsoft had recommended I reapply for a Product Manager internship instead of a Software Engineer, and it was one of the resources they had suggested I familiarize myself with. 


The book did a great job of using common objects and clear descriptions to showcase both good and bad design. There were clear steps and indicators given to the reader in order to evaluate a design and make it better if need be. The bit that stuck with me the most though is when the author said that when someone pushes on a door instead of pulling (or something to that effect) the user usually blames themselves, even though it's a fault of bad design. I've tried to incorporate that idea into my school or personal projects. If the user tries to do something and kicks themselves, I attempt to streamline the process to be clearer. It's made a noticeable difference. Changing the design isn't always easy, but the surmounting the challenge is rewarding. The book is full of tips and tricks that you can use, and has great depth of examined objects. I highly recommend reading it!


The following is an excerpt of a book report I've done on “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss.


--------------------------------------------


The most outstanding epic fantasy debut novel I have ever encountered, that kept

me awake reading into the night! 


This has to be the most incredible, astonishing and intensely gripping debut

fantasy novel I have ever encountered. I was recommended this book a while back

on GoodReads in view of the fact that I am an avid reader of the fantasy genre

and love to hear about new, fresh works within this genre. As soon as I began to

read chapter one I knew that I had stumbled upon something quite exceptional,

that I can only explain as my reaction being something on a par with how I

responded the first time I ever read JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 


I would like to reiterate the comments by Publishers Weekly who said “…this is

the type of assured, rich first novel that most writers can only dream of

producing…the fantasy world has a new star.” I couldn’t agree more with

this statement that is so true, as I feel that although there is so much great

works within the fantasy genre, I have just found something quite remarkable and

momentous. It is Patrick Rothfuss’ originality, depth and complexity of plot,

fluid and beautiful narrative that makes this story not just your average

magical, fantastical delight but somewhat truly great. 

It is like someone has opened a door onto the fantasy world glancing at Narnia, 

Middle-Earth, Pern and Novaria and has then looked even further across the horizon 

to see the four corners of civilization, where this inspired writer’s world lies amidst all of

the familiar and outstanding creations that we know and love. It is humorous in

places as well and absolutely terrifying, as it touches upon all the senses

making you feel so many different emotions like never before; with one minute

anxious and scared to the next feeling totally elated and empowered. Rothfuss’

world and entire creation full of magic and demons, Dragons, bloodlust and great

power. It has that wonderful historical element to it that so many readers love

with formidable battles between the good and the ambitious. The book is divided

into two time periods with the first in the present and the other covering years

of the past, that chronicling Kvothe's youth as he tells his story to a

Chronicler who asks for the unexaggerated version of his life. 


“…I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down

the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my

sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than

most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak

of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make

the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me”. 


So begins the tale of Kvothe with his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a 

difficult and dangerous school of magic. One comes to know Kvothe the notorious

magician, the accomplished thief, the masterful musician, the dragon-slayer, the

legend-hunter, the lover, the thief and the infamous assassin. The more you read

on into the story the more you want to know about the protagonist who is so

believable, who one can relate to and connect with in a tale that is so

delicately woven and subtle but has the most powerful and profound effect on the

imagination. 

This has to be my read of the year and one which is a great testimony and 

verification as to why I am a devotee and enthusiast of the fantasy genre. 


I took for granted the kind of wisdom I found in Zooburbia: Meditations on the Wild Animals Among Us before I read it. I figured, hey, I’m a pretty wise dude. I notice things. I’m very mindful. I’m sure my relationship with my actual habitat is perfectly harmonious. But I picked up the book because it’s the current blockbuster from the publisher putting out my first book next year (and THEN it turned out to be written by my best friend’s aunt), and I couldn’t put it down until I was done. Reading this book, I felt like I had been missing something going on right around me my whole life. Now I’ll never look at the habitat humans share with other city dwellers the same way again.


Man, I haven't had to do this in a long time. Also I decided to do a book report cover in the style I use to do, while in school. It would get me extra credit.



Hurray!


My dad was reading these when she was on, um, probably C or D. Now that she’s set a 26 book arc for herself, I’m sure she’s asked *constantly* if a) the heroine will die at the end b) what she’s going to do afterwards. Good for her for being at W!


Ok, your book report is great and the cover shows you went the extra mile. A+.


Other than my dad reading them, I had no idea about the contents. I got a lot of book recommendations today (and I read slow as hell due to going to bed early and my three kids) but I’ll try and read A soon :)


Oh! I hope you share the list of books. I'm always looking for new ones.


I am going to cheat on this one and just copy a (rather short) review I gave to The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (by Daniel Pembrey) on Goodreads:


Starts out strong, progressively gets sillier and less interesting. The real/virtual world divide is never well defined. 


Nice idea, meh execution.



And here I was thinking I’d never have to write another book report in my life :)


I’m a terribly slow reader. Mainly due to the fact that I’m easily distracted and can’t stop my mind from wandering off. I exclusively read in English, importing books from the UK. It’s a much more expressive language than Dutch, and English is a skill I love to improve whenever possible (another reason why I signed up for The Long Talk right there).


Let’s see, the last fiction book I finished was Halo: Cryptum. Apologies for my poor taste, but it’s a franchise that has strongly influenced my adolescence :)

The Halo books are surprisingly expansive and well-written. A bit surprising considering the rather shallow nature of the videogames. I’ve had a few short chats in the past with some of their story writers and they are clearly passionate about the universe and its history, although the books are usually written by well regarded external scifi authors that have no link with the studio. This specific novel is the first in a series of three they like to call “The Forerunner Saga”. It regards the final days of an ancient intergalactic civilisation, a few 100.000 years before the events of the videogames. Due to the vastly different timeframe, the story has hardly anything in common with the other instances of the franchise, except for the titular Halo.

Being written from the point of view of a non-human character, the book can sometimes feel very foreign. The author (Greg Bear in this case) and the writing team 343 Industries clearly put a lot of effort into crafting an entire culture and political structure that’s entirely different from what we’re used to, while having it still seem familiar. Things start off rather slowly with a young lad on a quest for treasure, traveling to an ancient Earth where he enlists the help of a few prehistoric humans. But, as you can predict, they quickly become witness to a chain of events that leads to the downfall of their empire. It sounds like a cheap B-movie plot when I summarise it, but it’s a pleasant surprise. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend reading it unless you’re into the whole Halo thing.


Next on my list of fiction to read:

- Unsurprisingly, book two and three of the same saga

- An interesting, experimental novel simply titled “S" by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams

- Pick up “The Sword of Truth” again


By now you should've noticed that I have a strong preference for science-fiction and fantasy :)


Cheers,


Sam


Serendipity. Serendipity. Many times I've tried to remember this word -- and then it always faded away, probably because there's no equivalent in Russian. So here's a story about a Russian word that doesn't have direct equivalent in English, and a book which brought it into light for me.


This book is called "Above the clouds". It is the diary of a Russian mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev, published by his American friend Linda Wylie. 


I love mountains, but as I'm pretty bad at sports, this is more of a platonic love. Sometimes I do some hiking and pay visits to them, but mostly I just watch movies and read books on the matter. One day I stumbled upon a story on the 1996 Everest tragedy, when many people died on top of the mountain. An American journalist who was among the climbers wrote a book, describing what happened and accusing one of the guides, Boukreev, for wrong decisions which led to deaths. Anatoli, who was already known in the US by that time, had to write a book in his defence, explaining himself and his actions. This book, called "The Climb", was a real discovery for me.


The thing is, there are many approaches towards climbing. Some people want to climb a mountain because "it's there". Some search an ability to prove things to themselves as well as to other people. Anatoli was different. In the mountains, he sought for a world of purity and clarity, a place where one has to be 100% honest and awake. He laughed at the concept of 'conquering' peaks, arguing that the only thing we can is to reach their altitude for a short moment -- if they let us to. He summarized all this into one sentence: "Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion." -- and this sentence is written on his memorial at Annapurna.


Probably this could not be the other way. He belonged to the mountains, and risked his life several times a year. He realized that he could not afford to have a family -- but still had met a woman who fell in love with him. And when he disappeared in an avalanche in 1997, she had put much effort into collecting all memory on him, travelling his home places, and finally translated his diaries into English, resulting in a book.


I would not say this is something of a special interest -- if you are not a lover of mountains like me. The diaries are fairly simple, describing fantastic athletic achievements in an ordinary way. He tries to find his place in the world, only to return to mountains where he always feels at home. 


But there's something more. Trying to understand Anatoli, obviously driven by her love for him, Linda went to explore the whole Russian way of feeling and thinking, and did an amazingly great job. She wrote an introduction, which is surely one of the best pieces describing where Russia is today. Here's my favorite (and flattering) part: 


"A single word in Anatoli's language, umilenie, is used to describe a complex emotion: the combination of tenderness, sadness, and exaltation. It is wonder that falls just short of tears. The man or woman who is unable to respond to beauty that deeply, Russians believe, has missed the point of being human. For them the scope of beauty is wide and deep: like the presence of courage in the old, the innocence of children, nature, and great music or art."


This could not be more accurate. Just a precious gem of understanding, a treasure you don't meet too often. An unexpected present from the US.


So that is the book: simple-hearted stories on mountains, cultural exploration, and also a big love confession. What a wonderful place is the world we are living in!




As it happens, I just finished reading a book called Ancillary Justice (by Ann Leckie) yesterday. This was the first space opera I've ever read. In fact, I didn't even know what a space opera was before a friend recommended the book to me. I used to read science fiction when I was younger, but for some reason I stopped. Maybe it was high school, encouraging me to read European classics, and then my drive to improve as a designer, leading me to mainly read practical books. Whatever it was, I shouldn't have abandoned scifi. As a comeback newbie to science fiction, I was blown away by the make-believe world and all the physics and psychology behind it. I should really read more of this stuff, for fun but also to expand my creative thinking. 


The main character in Ancillary Justice is a starship and artificial intelligence, operating with multiple ancillaries walking around talking care of business, until treachery rips the starship apart, destroys all ancillaries but one, and leaves the main character with just one human body. One body and consciousness instead of a distributed system. This setup generated interesting twists, and my favorite passage: "Too many apparently predictable people who are, in reality, balancing on a knife-edge, or whose trajectories might be easily changed, if only I knew."



Report/review: A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole):

A classic I'm planning to read again soon.  Because no one did as much to elevate innards and their functions to rightful importance than Ignatius J. Reilly.  We should all take a moment every now and then to celebrate Ignatius whenever we let a notorious belch or fart loose.




saturday porch hangs:

too many friends for the porch

(it didn’t collapse)


1. Planning a 4th of July vacation

2. Cooking great meals with friends

3. Wondering how long I’ll last on this thing


Oh god, I have no idea. It depends on whether it’ll go on weekends (when I hardly check my email); what my vacation days look like; whether I’ll be present every day.


I am, for the record, quite relieved that this is not happening over my honeymoon. Because I would fail. Precipitously.


2) How many days do you think the last person will go to?


Over a year, probably. People are tenacious and insane.


3) What kinds of things should I ask tomorrow and beyond?


Open-ended questions, probably – likely focused around small creative prompts. Writing a haiku was nice. Perhaps even drawing a little doodle? That would get rid of a lot of people, I bet.


You know that thing that happens when there’s a wreck on the side of the road, and everybody slows down to look at it? I grew up calling it a “gaper’s block.” My parents call it a “gaper’s block.” Apparently it’s a regional thing.


But then I went to college – in the same region, no less – and one day I called it a gaper’s block. Everybody looked at me like I had six heads. It was an embarrassing problem.


I still call it a gaper’s block, by the way.


//


Also: are these percentages relative to the original total, or the previous day’s total?


My friends and I were waiting for my parents to pick us up after seeing a concert on the south side. We were all sitting along the rim of a small pond that was ringed with pebbles and boulders.


I turned to my friend Chris, who was on the shotput team, and offered him $5 if he could clear the pond with one of the large boulders. He did – and it landed on the roof of a police car, crushing it and detonating the gas tank.


My parents picked us up – hitchhiking on Interstate 57. They asked no questions, bless their hearts. We never got caught for it.


My father is a shorter, angrier, straight-haired version of me, and he’s a security researcher at Gartner. His twitter bio says he cares about privacy (which I can confirm) and security (which is probably obvious). He also gardens a lot. I should call him today.



On Jun 16, 2014, at 10:08 AM, Jon Bell <jon@lot23.com> wrote:

How are you at a party? What role to do you play?


Depends on whether I’m running the party!


– If I’m running the party, I tend to run around a lot and pour beer for people and grill meats and I generally have, like, two minutes of conversation with any one person max.

– If Erin and I are running the party together, she’s the one who checks in on everyone and makes sure they are having a good time, while I do the aforementioned. (Clearly we should run more parties together.)

– If I’m attending a party, I tend to just plunk down with a beer and have a long conversation with folks until I finish the beer. I think I’m louder and more gregarious than par, certainly after having the beer, and I usually have to work to shut up and listen to others.


Who are you to your friends?


The guy who works on computers and has opinions about things. Also, who ends up serving really good beer.


How does your family see you?


At a conference I attended two years ago, one of the organizers needed a bio for my lanyard and called my dad to get it. He said I run a small business, have lots of talented friends, and am a "general badass.” I’m very grateful they didn’t share any embarrassing stories.


I like it when men check their privilege.

I like it when women, uh, are cool to hang out with? Just like men?

I like it when city planners give me more walled-off bike lanes.

I like it when tourists ask me for directions.

When I'm traveling, I like cities that are just enough not like my own to be interesting, yet easy to navigate.

I like when kids write notes to Santa.

I like it when adults act like adults.

I like it when the elderly pontificate.

I like it when friends hang out on my porch.

I like when the weather isn't as batshit insane as it is right now.

I like when designers recognize the ephemerality of their work.

I like when co-workers I DONT HAVE ANY LOL ROFL OMG #YOLO


While you're thinking through these, you're probably thinking of

people in your life that do these things. So there's one last

question.


I told Saya that I liked how she brought a lot of great people together in a room last night.


Attached.



I know it’s a biography of Walt Whitman, but it’s about Leaves of Grass at the end, so I’m sticking with it.


Warmest regards,




On Jun 20, 2014, at 12:24 PM, Jon Bell <jon@lot23.com> wrote:

I revisit this often. I love it. Please go take a look and share your thoughts about it.


I looked at this when it came out. Mike Monteiro wrote a (moderately raunchy) takedown of it shortly after, and while I like Robin's sentiment, now I can’t read Fish without thinking of Monteiro.


Also, I’m guessing a 7% drop means one person left at this point. 13 people now? 14?


Good math to you,


Donated $25 to the Ada Initiative, for advancing the cause of women in tech. Because lord knows the past year has been madness for many of them.



It was a beautiful Sunday in town: 73º with a light breeze. At the farmers' market, people were smiling, walking their dogs, socializing. Absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary at the farmers' market.


Four miles across town, however, was a different story. A bus had been hijacked, and the captors were going on a joyride, barreling down North Avenue at truly fearsome speed. Cops were chasing, but what could they do, really? Blockade the bus? They didn't even know what the captors wanted, and there were _children_ inside the bus. It was all very dire. Lives were at stake.


And the police commissioner was deeply irked about all this. For Sunday is his "me time", his time he's _supposed_ to be spending with his family, and now he's stuck saving all of these people in this stupid bus from these stupid aggressors who decided to go ahead and ruin his weekend anyway. Finally, the captors got on the radio and provided their list of demands:


> Write us the first 500 words of a story. It should not have a conclusion. You have 24 hours, or the bus will explode.


On a _Sunday?!_, thought the commissioner? I was just at the _farmers' market._ Farmers' market is the closest thing to church that hipsters even _have_ anymore. And the station is empty: it's just me. While the request is a less conventional than your typical demands of unmarked, non-sequential $100 bills, either I write this story or a few dozen people die a fiery death.


Was it the passengers' fault?, thought the commissioner. After all, they decided to get _on_ the bus with a shady individual (or individuals) who subsequently hijacked it and barreled it in loops around the main city park. Well, maybe not, though: perhaps the aggressors looked unassuming before they hijacked the bus. Or perhaps they had already _pre-hijacked_ the bus, making its stops as usual, and filled it with passengers before going on its joyride.


It's all unclear. The commissioner wanted to pack every bus in the city with tens of thousands of dollars in surveillance equipment _like God intended._ But nooooo: budgetary concerns, said the city council. And also it's unconstitutional. And political suicide.


AND LOOK WHERE WE ARE NOW. THE BUS IS FUCKED. If only it had been surveilled. If only this had happened on a day when there were more people in the station, so he could have foisted the Charles Dickens work on a hapless intern. This is what interns are for, right? So you can get on to the more interesting work? Everybody knows this. Even the interns _themselves_ know it. There's an unspoken deal.


The work itself has a chain of command and, today, commissioner, _you are the entire chain._ You mop the station. You fill out the tax forms. You deal with surprise inspections. And when someone hijacks a bus, you spring into action and do what you were hired to do.


And so the commissioner began writing.


He was done some minutes later. Reading his little story it seemed he had not given birth to a masterpiece. Should I send it right away or should I rewrite it?. The commissioner gave himself a minute to decide. They gave him 24 hours and that seems like a long time, but they did not tell him what would happen if he sent the story early, did they? Will they release the passengers upon getting the story? That did not seem like a possibility to him. So he had time to rewrite and make a great piece, it only takes practice, right?


The commissioner took his 500 words and reconsidered each one of them, each comma, each sentence structure. Maybe I am using too many adjectives? Did I slip an adverb? OMG I should have payed more attention in my English class but Judy's bosom was always peeking out of her blouse sleeve, what can a super hormoned teenager do? Google gave him some advice but most of it was contradictory and he lacked the knowledge to be sure what piece would be aplicable to his writing. Should he adhere to some school? Try to write like somebody else? Did he have the time to find his own voice?


It was now two hours after he received the request. Damn. His piece was looking much worse than the first one. THIS IS ALL A FUCKING JOKE, THEY ARE TORTURING ME. The commissioner decided to go out for pancakes. 


[That was brilliant! – if you wouldn’t mind passing that message on to whoever wrote that]


Norma’s. He sat down and ordered plain – maple syrup and a side of blueberries. Nothing heavy, he needed to stay alert.


As he chewed the first bite he thought about the little detail about this whole thing he hadn’t quite smoothed out yet: the voice recorder. He had been on the john when the captors radioed through and so he was played the demands from a little dictaphone that Dennis always had with him. The speech was – too clear somehow. He put down his fork and asked the server to turn on the TV – “any news station”. Click. Something about a shark attack. He squinted to read every story of the ticker at the bottom of the screen until it looped on itself. Nothing about a bus.


His heart sank a little. They had got him again. He smiled a little rueful smile, and whispered “well, damn”. The first time was the worst – the department had left a little love letter in his drawer that was apparently written by Maude from Traffic Enforcement. He had skipped around the building merrily for a few hours before asking her, in front of everyone, to join him for coffee in his office to “discuss the serious matter she had disclosed to him”. Oh dear.


This time wasn’t as bad. Write a story? So what? He had hardened up. I’m the commissioner, he thought. I can take it. Big sigh. I just need a bit of a time off. He left a ten on the counter and got into his car. He headed for his lakeside house. He’d back in a couple of days and fire a few people. It would help his mood.


It was a beautiful Monday – 73º with a light breeze. He sat out on the deck with a beer and a little yellow pad. This has actually been a little kick in the pants, he thought. I really should write those memoirs while I’m still young enough to cash in on them.


Mile away, on the other side of the state, a bus sat smouldering at the side of a road.


OH GOD HAVE I EVER DONE THIS.


Let’s assume 1) they drink, 2) they eat meat, and 3) they have no other commitments 4) for a weekend. Let’s also assume they are from England, which culinarily sucks. Because if they were from, say, Korea, then I would not be taking them for Korean food. You can get Korean food in Korea. That is an obvious thing.


Restaurants:

– The Publican. My favorite beer bar and restaurant in the city. Hope you like ten kinds of fish and three different provenances of pig face.

– Big & Little’s. They sell foie gras, ahi tuna, and day-old shrimp (which, for the Midwest, that’s a big deal). Oh, and they’re a fucking hot dog stand. Big & Little’s epitomizes one of my favorite aspects of Chicago, which is that it’s sort of illegible and drab to outsiders until you realize that a lot of places are just turning out world-class work, be it food, beer, cocktails, plays, or whatever.

– Da Rae Jung. Owned by a couple in their 80s, this is the best Korean restaurant in the city, and you will not pay more than $8 for a meal here. Oh, and it’s BYOB. Bring a bomber of some giant DIPA.

– Victory’s Banner. Followers of a buddhist monk opened an all-vegetarian brunch joint in Chicago, AKA The Land of Sausage and Cholesterol, and are completely killing it. Best Chai in the city; best eggs in the city; best french toast in the city.

– Lula Cafe. Patient zero for slow food in the midwest, they catered my wedding.


Bars:

– Longman & Eagle. My corner bar… until it got a Michelin star four years ago. Then, okay fine, it stayed my corner bar. Over 200 kinds of bourbon, 20 taps, and probably the most convivial place in town.

– The Green Mill. A Capone speakeasy that’s somehow miraculously still in operation, with baller-good jazz and blues 7 nights a week, really friendly staff, and cheap taps. Sometimes gets crowded, but whatever.

– Half Acre. The best brewery in the city – and across the street from a bunch of great BYOB restaurants. Hope you like your hops dank.


Places to go:

– The Museum of Contemporary Art. Yes, I know the Art Institute has American Gothic and Grande Jatte. The MCA is better. Hopefully they’re cool enough that they want to look at a batshit insane Lee Bontecou career retrospective with me. If they are not, I’ll punt to Art Institute.

– American Science & Surplus. THIS STORE IS THE CORPOREAL EMBODIMENT OF MY CHILDHOOD. They buy up used and surplus scientific supply from laboratories and schools across the country, and then they sell it to you. Need to set something on fire? They’ve got you. I have never spent more than $20 in one trip here. Also I got all of the decor for my wedding here. Also I wrote my college essay about them.

– Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. A perpetual attempt to perform 30 “plays” (really short skits) in 60 minutes. The actual content of the plays differs week to week, with the roll of two dice determining how many to cycle in and out. Perpetually sells out. I’ve gone about once every six weeks since seventh grade. I’ve cried at least ten times at this thing, and laughed myself off my chair twice as often.

– Millennium Park. Because you have to. It’s the only place in the city that locals and tourists like to go.

– Wrigley Field. I would force them to, because I’m secretly a giant Cubs fan and hate myself.


Word,


Yesterday someone dropped out, so now we’re down to five people!


I FUCKING KNEW IT


SORT OF


MORE OR LESS


Today tell me about one of your first boyfriends or girlfriends.


My first girlfriend asked me to be her boyfriend in seventh grade. When I said yes, she pecked me on the cheek. That was the only physical contact we would have for the entire duration of our torrid three-month romance.


Okay, I lied a little on that. She had over 400 bottles of nail polish and refused to let me leave her house without painting my nails. And toes. I guess that qualifies as physical contact. But it's not really getting to a "base", now is it. Either way, it was deeply unsatisfying.


Every time she would paint my nails, and every time I would go home and use mom's acetone to clean them off, and every Monday she would be deeply irked that I did not show off my manicure to everyone in school.


Just to be clear: "school" was 32 people. Everyone knew everyone. It was utterly unavoidable to know everyone. If I had painted nails in school, it would have been the living end of my social life forever.


Anyway, she became a manager at a branch of Chase Bank in the suburbs, turned into a huge foodie and Chicago Blackhawks fan, and the last time I saw her she was blasting down Fullerton Avenue in the back of a pickup truck with several others, shooting off Roman candles, the day they won the Stanley Cup.


I'm in the patriarchy lounge at SEA and am going to write more than 250 words because my phone's email app doesn't have a word count function. If you need, cut the first 250 words of this mid-sentence and call it Dada poetry.


Anyway, I was going to write a thank-you note, and now seems like a good opportunity to do two things at once.


I'm very grateful that I had the chance to come to Seattle and hang out with everybody this weekend. Seattle is a great city and I have a blast every time – that I could do it with 20 amazing, talented folks is just gravy. Excellent design thinking gravy. Oh god, I ate so much food this past weekend.


I'm also really happy that I got to meet you. It was great sharing our life stories, and I appreciate all of your work so much. I hope that I can return the favor in Chicago someday soon.


I've been thinking a lot about the past weekend, as I suspect everyone has, and it really just came down to semi-structured hangouts in a city with a bunch of friends. The template is repeatable, and it's not confined to Seattle: it can happen in any city, anywhere, for any or no reason.


So now you've got me all thinking about how to pull this off in Chicago, of course. My living room can easily fit twenty people – in fact, I hold monthly talks for 18, so I even have enough chairs and know how much beer and pizza to order, etc.


Maybe September. That seems like it'll happen fast enough that I won't need to second-guess anything.


This is definitely more than 250 words now. Thanks again for everything. I'm very happy that I know you; you're basically the best.


Take care,


Oh god. So, this one is going to get really dark really quickly, aaaand you’re probably not going to know what to do about it, and I’m probably a horrible person.


Remember when I told you high school was a shitshow the other day? Several folks collectively bullied me daily for three years. It sucked a lot! And I had no idea what to do about it, because of the aforementioned sheltered existence. I had no allies in high school and the math team wasn’t exactly going to bat for me. I had casual friends, and the honors kids would offer backhanded sympathy and then proceed to do nothing. Because what could they do? They’d just become targets themselves.


Junior year – two months before Columbine – I snapped and beat the absolute shit out of one of them. Like, dude ended up in the hospital, didn’t go back to school for as long as I attended, it took five people to remove me from him, etc.


And the entire faculty knew what happened – and had been happening, for years – and did nothing about it. They knew if they went after me, everybody with a B+ GPA and above would revolt. Why not discipline the other guy all the times that he fucked with me? It was nakedly obvious for years. Meanwhile, they knew if they went after the folks who bullied me only after this happened, the whole football team – which, for reference, was the pride of the entire fucking state for that whole decade – would revolt, because their power had gone unchecked for so long. Doing nothing was the easiest way to prevent even worse things from happening, so nothing is what they did.


Three weeks ago, one of the folks who bullied me – although not the one I beat up – delivered a stack of pizzas to me, Erin, and 20 of my friends on my back porch. Because of course that would happen.


Take care,



Got a tattoo of the dragon curve, which is a fractal with some mathematical parallels to the research that I did in college. The full explanation is better in person.


Also there's a scar on my left hand from playing egyptian rat screw. And a surgery scar on my left pelvis. And a birthmark on my back, between my shoulders. And I got a mole cut off on my abdomen once.


I ALREADY SORT OF DID THIS http://vimeo.com/m/81369551


Sure, as long as it's anonymous.


1. I will defeat you eventually. Happy to meet you!


2. So, my friend Jon runs this thing called the Long Talk, where you have to reply to a creative prompt of some kind every day. You compete against others; last one standing wins.


Jon is a master of establishing light, immediately legible constraints. He once ran a Dropbox share that couldn't top 1MB, and a slapdash community formed out of it. The Long Talk is another thing in that vein, sort of: Jon is writing the prompts, and even though we should all have dropped him by now,  it's still been pretty amazing. I keep anxiously refreshing my email to make sure I didn't miss that day's installment.


On Jul 7, 2014, at 10:49 AM, Jon Bell <jon@lot23.com> wrote:

Starting today we're going to do an email game together, improv-style.

Each of you is going to explain your character (physical appearance


An actual dang vampire. Extremely long red cloak. Occasional fangs. Doesn’t turn into a bat very often. Think more old-school Bram Stoker and less Mr. Burns from that one Simpsons halloween special.


as well as motivations),


Sucking blood, haunting things, etc. Usual vampire things. Surely you’ve read about vampires before; they’re kind of one-dimensional.


the environment the story begins in,


Boring ol’ corn-row-sprawl suburbia.


and what

the character does first.


Gets out of his coffin, stretches, yawns, complains about how crappy he slept last night, and makes a pot of strong coffee.


Fillip, an actual dang vampire, has lived in Paris for about a thousand years. Well, not Paris exactly, but a ways out in the countryside. But he adores visiting Paris, and he tries to visit most evenings. After a pot of strong coffee, he gets ready to take the train into the city. It's about 9:45pm.


He roams the bars. The bars are the most sensible for him. He has a usual ritual: go to a wide array of bars, so he doesn’t attract too much attention. Post up at the bar, where people are willing to talk to one another. And order his usual: absinthe and sugar. He waits for others to arrive for drinks, biding his time.


“You know, people don’t usually figure it out that quickly.”


Wait, _what?_ I just stood there.


“Oh come on, you look like you haven’t ever seen a vampire before.”


“You’re a _vampire?_”


Like, a real vampire? Is this person kidding me? It _is_ October. Maybe he’s just dressing up.


“Yep, but it’s just a thing. Anyway, want some wine?”


“I don’t know if I should drink.”


“Oh nonsense, it’s not harmful. Plus, the bartender served me.”


“I’m not going to drink wine from a vampire. And I’m not that old.


“Fine, suit yourself.”


“Are y…you going to eat me?”


Fillip laughed. “Vampires don’t _eat_ people! You’ll just end up undead.”


I ran. Was he giving chase? I didn’t know. I kept finding small alleys to try and lose his trail. I didn’t know where I was going. Eventually the streets opened to a large square, and I tried to lose myself in the crowd. Did the vampire even care that much?


It was getting late. Were the others wondering where I was? I felt bad. I didn’t even bring my iPad, so I couldn’t find anyone. I ducked into an all-night restaurant and sat down at the counter.


And then Fillip put down his newspaper and turned to face me.


“Look, people don’t get away from me that easily. I’ve spent a thousand years hunting others. I have become quite good at it.


“It’s not like I _want_ to do this. You don’t get to choose your lot in life: immortal or not, undead or not, Nosferatu or not. It’s a living. Or an un-living. However you want to slice it. Shall we walk?”


I shook my head.


“We could make a scene of this. You don’t want us to do that, now do you? It would be… _inconvenient._”


“I just want to know who you are.”


He looked taken aback. “Why?”


“I don’t know. I’ve never met one of you before. If you’re going to hunt me, I may as well be curious. Am I going to die?”


“Yes.”


“Why?”


“I don’t know why people die. You might.”


“I don’t know any more than others. I’ve seen a lot, after all. Wars, disasters, all sorts of nonsensical bloodshed. People die. And then there are more people. And _they_ die. And it goes on and on and on.”


“Are you from Transylvania?”


“No, that’s just a myth. Although I have lots of family in Transylvania.”


“Do they have iPads?”


“No, we communicate via telegram.”


“Have you been to Transylvania?”


Stalling for time is hard, I thought. I wondered if this was my last day on Earth. What being a vampire would be like. If I could ever escape.


The waiter walked up to me and asked what I wanted to order.


“Just french fries.”


He looked at Fillip, then back at me. “Are you lost, kid?”


“N…no.”


“Who’s your friend?”


“Oh, this is just a guy I met.”


“You shouldn’t talk to strangers! Get out of here. I don’t want to see you in here anymore. You never even order anything.”


And Fillip, dejected, horrified, looked behind him, got up, turned around, and walked out.



THANK YOU FOR NOT REQUESTING 1,000 WORDS TODAY.


Here are five:


– Blonde lady, black helmet, Mercier bike, stopped to let me cross at the intersection.

– Clone of @aworkinglibrary with blue hair, hammering away on a laptop.

– Blonde streak, Surly bike, didn’t notice me at first.

– Red t-shirt, won’t stop yelling about her achievements in Microsoft Excel.

– Hispanic, middle-aged man, carrying two crates down the street.

Gray slayer shirt, widow’s peak, carrying a garden hose.

Tan t-shirt, khakis, back turned, grouting a brick wall.

Bangs, cap sleeves, walking her dog.

1’ beard, giving a bear hug to his friend.

Angry person driving a car and honking at me.



Attached.


Sorry I didn’t include Miscellaneous, our little beagle. She looked like a beagle and sniffed everything and lived a good, stupid life.





On Jul 13, 2014, at 10:37 AM, Jon Bell <jon@lot23.com> wrote:

Last day of elementary school


Remember the sense of wonder that you have right now, hold it as closely as you possibly can, and try to act on it however you can for the rest of your life. From this point forward, people are going to try and take that away from you.


Last day of junior high


Do everything you can to build a small world for yourself, and to hell with every single other person who tries to mess with it.


Last day of high school


In college, the most important advice I got was that I would learn time management. That remains one of the most important things that happened to me – I’ve been a good manager of my time in my life and career, and my friends and colleagues respect me tremendously for it.


One thing I didn’t learn was that I need to retain my relationships with as many people as possible. I did a horrible job of burning bridges with people I really shouldn’t have burned bridges with, and – real talk – the ramifications of that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.


You’re going to giggle at the notion of taking an etiquette class as a freshman, and you’re right to do it, but being a good person to your friends and colleagues is all the etiquette you’ll ever need. Talk through shit like the adult that you are, or face the consequences.


Last day of college


The world is as hard as you suspected, and you need to nut up and face it. Do not take a gap year or go to graduate school if you’re trying to face the inevitable. You need to be honest with yourself and all of your dealings, now and for the rest of your life.


Last day of post-grad


If you didn’t do that specifically to lead to a career path, you fucked up. Either way, you need to develop a clear path to a stable, self-actualizing job that you genuinely enjoy. Now. Don’t delay on it.


The day they’re married


Hope you didn’t plan a wedding. If you did, from this point forward you need to snap into triage mode, because that was the worst thing that could have possibly happened to your relationship.


If you didn’t, you should go to Italy and eat a sandwich now.


Take care,

-- 

nickd! http://nickd.org


My name is Nick Disabato, although everyone just calls me nickd. I’m a designer and writer from Chicago, and I really enjoyed doing this. For a sense of me now, you should head over to http://nickd.org.


Take care,

-- 

nickd! http://nickd.org




7% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day four :)


One of my favorite works of art is Robin Sloan's Fish. Look at it here:

https://readtapestry.com/s/YuyuuzQO8/


I revisit this often. I love it. Please go take a look and share your thoughts about it.


I love this too. I love that it was an app on your phone. A whole app. Like a book on a bookshelf rather than a piece of “content” on a platform. (Maybe that’s why he released it like that.)


(Also, tapping to interact felt much more personal than clicking on a site. Still, this format is such a great way to experience a “talk”. At your own pace, but with the author’s pacing. It’s not really a slide deck, even though it is.)


Relevant:


"Is there a Facebook update that compares to building a thing? No, but I’d argue that 82 Facebook updates, 312 tweets, and all those delicious Instagram updates are giving you the same chemical impression that you’ve accomplished something of value. Whether it’s all the consumption or the sense of feeling busy, these micro-highs will never equal the high when you’ve actually built.”

– http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-builders-high/


Hi Jon


There are things I like about Fish, and things I don't like about it.


I think the point that we can and should be more mindful of what we consume and come back to the things we love is a good one. However, there's a whole lot of other ideas floating around in there that I think weaken the point of returning to the things you love.


He states there's an endless flood of good content. That we can't keep up with. But that we can keep up with because of algorithms and curators. That likes help you focus your attention. But at the same time that likes mean very little. He points out that likes are mostly about other people (friends, creators, publishers) but then somehow seems to suggest we should focus on loving which to me is very much something about yourself. Liking is signalling to others, loving and returning is something not visible to others. Liking and loving are not mutually exclusive. Maybe I am confused because he conflates "liking" as in appreciating something, with "liking" as in clicking a button and uses them interchangeably.


I think he's right in pointing out that by returning and reexamining you can find new things, and I think this is a worthwhile message. But I find that this is completely disconnected from the earlier stated problem of the overabundance of good content. Should I just ignore it all, only go back to the things I've read/seen/experienced before?



Having said all that, I think it's an interesting piece and that it's worthwhile to be mindful of how and what you visit and revisit.


I dunno how I feel about it. There are many articles I revisit constantly on the web, but it's more as a reference for programming or tutorials on design than anything else. I've never found an online article that has spoken to me on that level. There are many books, movies, and things like that. But online articles? I can't think of any I'd revisit (or rather, that I have revisited). There are some articles that I've been fascinated by on Medium, but would I go back? Probably not. It's something to keep in the back of my head from this point on, though!


That was a great read.


I really think Robin has a point. 

There are so many things that gets shared, retweeted and added to your Read It Later-queue.

It's barely possible to follow along, and sitting down, re-reading or re-watching things is almost 

never something you have time to do.


Sometimes you should slow down, revisit something you love, and enjoy it for what it is.


I think about this alot. How things expire. Just in one day how things can become "old" and dated.

I think things need to be revisited more. Robin was mentioning Jason Kottke. I've been a big fan of his for a long time. (I even helped him with this one project he did called The Noughtie List). I feel like he looks for the same type of content that I do. Some of it has expiry dates and somethings are just interesting things that are easy to revisit.


Kottke created this great side project called Stellar.io which unearthed this whole underbelly of the internet. People's faves. The things that no one every revisits. This is a timeline view the best of the best of the internet. It's funny tweets, good links/articles, youtube and vimeo videos. 


Another thing I really love is the Timehop app. I revisit my old links and photos from 1 year to 6 years ago today. THAT is what I find really interesting. All those throw away and share links that I sent out to the internet are revisited again. 


You can't collect the internet in the way that Robin desires though. A physical object. So much of our physical is becoming digital. I remember climbing through my parents bookshelves, looking for a good book to read. That reason alone is why I have a hard time getting rid of ALL of my books to digital. The thing with physical objects is they are there, physically reminded you of their existence. It's really hard to do that with digital, which is why we have digital reminders. But they all come at us with the same urgency, so they are easy to ignore. 


Have you ever thought about how much digital information we go through? I'm reminded of this artist's installation, who printed out every photo that got uploaded to Flickr in one day.


Humbling, and certainly thought provoking, Kessel’s work challenges the notion that everything can and should be shared, which has become fundamental to the modern web. Then again, perhaps it’s only wasteful and overwhelming when you print all the pictures and divorce them from their original context.


No wonder people need so many social network outlets these days.  


I'll never say it better than I said it the first time! http://readwrite.com/2012/03/21/robin_sloans_fish_a_tap_essay_about_liking_loving


I promise I will. Today, however I can't. 




Awesome! :)



Amazing take at informational overload. I have just a few items on the web I revisit often ("mother earth, motherboard" comes to mind now). I visit places to get my fixes of new stuff and sometimes, just sometimes, I dive deeper into something, find the sources, read or watch away... I think I might try to change this. Thanks for sharing that piece, is absolutely gorgeous. 


Day four? You’re getting sloppy Jon :)


Thanks for the read. It’s hard to disagree with him in a day and age like this. It actually got me to revisit this slightly relevant video of Louis C.K. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c). I tend to ignore shared internet content as much as possible (I mute/muffle a lot of domain names in Twitterrific to keep my feed as link-free as possible). Some of my friends are well aware of that, and I love how they take the time to share the things they love with me personally through mail or by showing it in person. It adds a lot more value to the recommendation, and I’m instantly aware that the shared content will actually be worth my time and attention.

I have a very special way of dealing with things I truly love. It’s odd and it probably makes no sense, but I tend to avoid my absolute favorite things. It has to be some sort of faulty wiring in my brain. Take The Fellowship of the Ring for example, which is by far my favorite movie of all time (hey, there’s that fantasy preference again). I love that movie so much I don’t even have a second favorite, but about 5 years ago I decided to sell my only DVD, and I haven’t watched it since. About a month ago I had completely forgotten about it when I ran into an ad for a showing of “The Lord of the Rings in Concert" where the movie is projected on an enormous screen while the score is played by a live orchestra. I impulsively ordered two tickets without much thought. It wasn’t until a few days later that I actually started to get excited about it, and now I’m looking forward to it about as much as I was thirteen years ago.

I’ve given the same treatment to quite a few things: I haven’t played the original Halo for years; I’ve recently started ecstatically rewatching LOST along with my wife (I’m not alone); I hadn’t heard Sigur Ros’s Hoppípolla for years when it played on my wedding day; I haven’t been skiing for almost a decade but I still clean my gear every few months.

It’s most likely a very mentally unhealthy thing to do, but rediscovering a long lost love is a much more intense feeling than regularly paying it a visit :)


Cheers,


Sam


I also loved the story, and the truly brilliant way of reading from tapestry also helps. Re-read it with pleasure.


It's hard not to agree with all the points. I think we'll need much time to get used to this abundance of information, and form a culture for handling it well. 


Same thing happened with food century or two ago. Before some point, most people didn't choose what to eat. They ate what they could get. I've read a 19th century report about peasants who were working at the state construction site and died from overeating. The state provided dinners, making large kettles of soup or porridge, and the peasants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted; so those who were not used to this abundance simply didn't know when to stop.


Later we learned not only to stop, but also what to eat, when to eat and how to eat. We passed the Many Plates era and the Few Plates era; the Proteins era and the Vitamins era. Now we are in the Vegetarian and "Organic" era, and I'm pretty sure that's not the end.


Regarding information, I think we are still in the shoes of these poor peasants. Look, when I was a kid I could read only what my parents had in their home library. And that was it. I examined all these books many times, reading it from the beginning to end and from end to the beginning. We had a world atlas, and I used to "travel" through its pages, imagining new lands and adventures.


20 years have passed, and now almost any book you can imagine is just a click away, and a whole Google Earth is at your service. 


Russian book lovers started to digitize books in the late 90s, and soon there were free libraries with hundreds of thousands of books. We would download these, boasting sizes: I've got a 2Gb library -- and I've got a 7Gb library. And then the frightening understanding came like a cold shower: we don't have enough time in our lives to read even 1% of these books! It's here, at your HDD, you own it, but you can't really use it. Something really not possible only few years before.


I remember newsgroups that seemed so important that I had to read every message. In the 90s we didn't have much Internet, so we used Fidonet, exchanging data with simple dial-up through node servers set up by volunteers. I was reading 20+ groups, wasting several hours every day. One summer I went to travel for a month, and when I returned I realized that I didn't miss all these data flows. So I just stopped to use Fido completely.


Then came the blogs. It was so cool to have one, to find friends and then "de-virtualize", as we called it: to meet each other in person. I made many friends in other cities this way. But after few years blogs started to fade away, facebook and twitter came into light, and everybody went crazy once more. Today we are getting tired of these too -- and there's something next to come, again.


Looking back I think people didn't really need most of these new information tools and channels. What they really wanted was just to play with something new. And we are still playing, finding fun in exploring new ways of reading, learning, entertaining, spending and wasting time. Time will tell what is really important and what is not. And all the superfluous stuff will be gone eventually. I think that "loving things on the internet" is a good step in the right direction.


Whoa I really enjoyed this. Thank you!


That's the power of fear -- fear of dropping of the list :))


"Welcome to day four"?


The main message holds true; too much data/info/knowledge everywhere.  However, the choice of text vs background colour makes me feel antagonistic towards the site.  And I wish the text was displayed at least a few paragraphs at a time.  Per word/line did not increase impact of message, but the cli-click-clickity-clicking increased my level of antagonism.




8% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day twelve! :)


Today give any amount to charity and let me know who you gave to and why.


There's a homeless woman who sits outside of the underground station near my house. She's often frail and cold looking but she was looking spritely today when I passed her. On my way back home I'm going to give her some cash to maybe help (in a very small way) keep her in that good place.



Hi Jon


I gave to GiveDirectly. It's a charity that basically just hands out cash to poor people in Kenya and Uganda. It's still a young organisation and I don't know what the impact will be in the long run, and I have my doubts about scaling up their operations. Nevertheless there is something pleasing about their model. I give money, they say 90% will be given as cash, and those who receive the money can decide what to do with it. I'm glad I made this donation, but probably won't give to them again until they've been around for a bit longer and there is some stronger evidence to their effectiveness. I'll probably stick with the charities with a proven track record focusing on fighting malaria and parasitic worms until then.


MS Canada, because of a friend who lost a parent. 


We're soon at the end of the month, so I donated $0 to N/A.


Ack! I was gone all day and forgot! 

Noooooooooo



Oh well, this was fun!


I donated to At The Crossroads, a great organization where my friend Irina works. They do daily and nightly outreach and deliver supplies to homeless youth in San Francisco. I know it goes to great use, and I like to support the causes my friends work on



Kids dropping off of school way too early is a problem: https://fundacionbalia.org/#



That's a nice one :)


Gave €20 to WWF, plus €15 to the local animal shelter. I'm very fond of nature and I like to do my part whenever possible. It may be a cruel thing to say, but I'd never donate to any humanitarian aid as long as the climate or the environment is in the state it's in now.


Cheers,


Sam


Charity. For me it always was a complicated thing.


Carlos Castaneda nailed it in one of his books. There he tells a story about a snail.


Once they were walking by the road with his teacher, Don Juan. Castaneda noticed a snail in the middle of the road. To save it from cars, he picked it up and threw away into the grass. Don Juan said: what have you done? -- I saved the snail, answered Carlos. -- But how do you know? May be the snail was escaping from the poisonous plants, and it took the whole day for it to travel the half of the road to the other side -- and you had ruined all its efforts, just because you wanted to feel yourself better! Admit it, you threw the snail away not because you cared about it, but only to feel yourself comfortable as a virtuous man!


Castaneda was shocked and puzzled, but he realized that Don Juan was right. So he was going to find the snail in the grass and put it back on the road. But Don Juan shouted -- wait! Now it was a destiny of this snail, that some moron would throw it away from the road today. Don't touch it or you'll make things even worse.


This parable may seem exaggerated, but there's a truth behind it. We don't really know the consequences of our actions, especially towards people (or snails) we don't know. And often people do charity not thinking of the real impact of their act, but caring only about feeling themselves better.


Imagine there's a homeless person on the street. You give him money, which he could use to buy alcohol, get drunk and freeze to death. Have you done a good or a bad thing? Probably it's a silly way of thinking, but it captures my brain every time I have to make such a choice. I think it would be better to feed a homeless man, or share some clothes with him, or -- remember that guy who decided to teach such a man programming?


Seems that real charity takes more time and effort, than just dropping a coin. You have to be responsible when you give. I'm not sure if I have ever done anything like that.


So today I thought I had a good chance to start. And the choice was obvious. Probably you've heard about the war in Eastern Ukraine. I'm not 100% sure who is wrong and who is right, but regardless of that there are bombs flying into buildings, there are civilians dead and injured. That's horrible to see this happening right here, some 1000 km away. I found a trusted group of people, collecting money for humanitarian aid, and sent them some money for the next truck which is heading there. I hope my small contribution will help volunteers to cure people and save lives....


//


p.s. once I was a subject of charity. This was in the beginning of 90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US government send Russia humanitarian aid, and one day mom brought home several packages of American dry milk. We didn't starve, it was ok, but there were some food limitations. So it was really great. I ate it in dry form, enjoying its sweet taste. I remember this very clearly even now, and still feel grateful. :)


What great stories! Love hearing your thought process too.


My brother used to live in Ukraine and last night I met two Ukrainian women. Been on my mind a lot lately, so it's great hearing that you helped that cause.


I've been there lots of times. It never felt as a different country, because people are almost the same, most of them have Russian as native language. But now it's getting complicated, as Russians and Ukranians get angry at each other. And -- they don't hear each other. Don't want to know, don't want to understand. I never thought it could ever happen. And now I'm afraid to talk to my friends there -- because I fear we'll not be able to find common ground.


I'll tell you more about that in Seattle if you'll be interested. There's lot to learn in such events, unfortunately the price is too high.


I tend to keep my charity donations private.




24% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day thirteen :)


Write me the first 500 words of a story. It should not have a conclusion.


Scootch forward and get out of bed at the end. Toilet. Living room. Lie on the couch with your iPhone. On your side. Heart pounding, hard squint. Safari. BBC News. Mail. Twitter. Home screen. Flip through the pages of icons for a while. Nice animation. Put the phone on the floor, lie on your back. Close eyes.


–


Fill the kettle. Mug. Teabag. Teaspoon. Milk.


Shower. Clothes. Tea.


Laptop. Chrome. BBC News. Mail. Chrome. Woman wearing a lobster as a hat. A cartoon cigarette butt with a face. A cat sleeping on a huge Totoro teddy bear. Old stamps.


Malibu bottle illustrated with a line drawing of clouds. Black and white photo of treetops, but a man is falling from the sky. A business card with an anchor on it.


A receipt with all the items crossed out. Albino cat looking up. Man shining a torch right through a dog. Animated gif of VW campervan.


Close up of a cat's nose and mouth. Man in a bath with donuts. A robot playing the keyboard. Nike logo redesign. Gravestones made out of card.


Calvin and Hobbes strip. Woman floating in a room filled with water. Spherical house, 1959. Pink soap with a bite taken out of it.


Godzilla stained-glass window. Cat standing on hind legs. Close-up of something shiny. A horse-shaped helium balloon.


Vintage watch face. Skull hair-grip. That Red Bull guy falling from space. Image of cells. The Apple logo drawn in Krink.


Animated gif of yawning baby fox. Filo pastry stretched over a Mercedes Benz? A mound of pink ice cream, melting. Screenshot of Xerox Star.


Hi Jon


I'm sorry, but I really won't be able to make it with this story.

I hope a lot of the rest of the group manages to make it!



Björn


Why not? What could possibly go wrong? There is a first time for everything. It struck him that many, many, years ago he won a literary contest. He was young then, a kid in fact, and was writing in his mother tongue. Anyway, there was no chance. His captor demanded a 500 word open-ended story and his only chance of survival was to give it to him.


She was out in a terrace enjoying the last days of spring, very soon it would be impossible to be outside in the heat. Summer in Madrid can be cruel. A beer and some almonds were on the table a light breeze caressing her bare legs. Waiting is never fun but in these few days of mild temperature and golden light when time goes quickly and your only care is wether to order another beer or not. She pulled out her phone, some delay is ok but over twenty minutes without a warning is probably too much. No messages, no calls, nothing. She checked her email to find no new messages. Logged in OKCupid and saw nothing either. Too bad, the guy seemed promising but got cold feet at the last minute it seemed. Having nothing better to do, she ordered another beer.


He was at home when they came, rushing through the door, all clad in black, tactical masks and the like. He thought it had to be a mistake, nobody would go through that much effort for a nobody like him. Still they hogtied him, threw him in the back of a van and drove away in the night. That would have been three or four days ago. His cell had just a small bed, a wc without doors a light that was always on and a speaker to bark orders to him. The worst thing was he had a date today or tomorrow, first one in ages...


Looks like you really want me working on that story :)


Here goes, in the best English that I could muster:


The pearly-white snow cracked under the inquisitor’s leather shoes. He grumbled at the thought of his brand-new pair being ruined so soon. His instructions had failed to mention the last half mile of his journey not being traversable by car. Luckily the dense forest road soon opened up into what appeared to be a recently cleared open space, with a wooden cabin located at its exact center. The surprisingly modern construction was a lot larger than he had expected, clearly being intended to hold more people than its current single occupant.

After spotting a lonely light-filled window, the newly appointed official set out to follow a trail of strange trinkets sticking out from the snow, hoping they would take him to the building’s entrance and out from the freezing cold. The crude little things clearly weren’t left here by the cabin’s constructors. Various shapes and symbols; twigs and branches sown together with mere rope and threads.

Reaching the end of the trail and rounding the nearest corner, he noticed that the far side of the building wasn’t complete at all; left unfinished or partially torn apart. On the first floor most of the walls appeared to be missing, revealing the unfurnished, snow-covered insides of the rooms.

As he ducked below a log that had partially detached itself from the building, he caught eye of what seemed to be the structure’s only outside door, only a foot or two taller than himself and clearly much too small for a building of this size.

The inquisitor took a deep breath while going up the few steps leading to the entrance, brushed the snow from his shoulders, and reached out to knock. His gesture was abruptly interrupted as the door opened up a few inches revealing a pair of grey, hazy eyes staring back at him. Surprised by the voiceless face, he drew back his hand and cleared his throat. 

“Sorry to bother you at this late hour.” he announced, only partially hiding his frustration. “I’m here on behalf of the…”

“What do you bring?” interrupted the person at the other side.

“Sorry?” he responded.

“What did they give you?”

Slightly stunned by the sound of the hoarse voice, the inquisitor edged slightly closer to crack in the door, lifting up the flap of his shoulder bag trying to reveal the unmarked box that had been handed to him by his instructors. Without warning the door swung open, a wrinkled arm reaching into the bag and seizing its contents. The elderly woman stood in the doorway, eyes fixed on her prize. She grabbed the box with surprising force and nearly snapped the bag’s strap while clumsily running back inside the room. She was dressed in a dark tuxedo that clearly hadn’t been changed or washed in months, her unkempt hair leaving greasy streaks on the now grey shirt. The snow that had piled up against the door had fallen inside, now spreading across the books and notes that littered the floor; the outside wind rustling the papers that covered the dim room’s every wall.

Interpreting the still open door as an invitation, the youngster hesitantly took a step inside and slowly looked around the mess and disorder as he closed it behind him.



Cheers,


Sam


That was a tough one for me. Hope I'm not late, and hope it's not too silly :)


***


There was nice moisture in the air, and the giant leaf waved gently below her feet.

She sticked her snout into a drop of water to drink. An ant ran by. Waiting. Waiting. Hoping for some luck.

A new gust of wind made the leaf rock again. But this time it was different. There was a tantalizing smell in it, which made her body sing. Food! First smell of food in three days! 

She lifted off and fluttered her wings as hard as possible, making her way towards the delicious destination. Shadows and sunspots changed each other in a slow rhythm. Bushes floated away, and she found herself on a nice fringe. Strengthening smell directed her left, making her mad and courageous. 

There he was, a giant package of delicious warm food, closer, closer, touching this hairy surface, sensing a vivifying flow right beneath, here's it, at last; she unfolded her snout to start eating, and ---


Whack! Mr. Stout slapped his arm, crinkling irritatingly. Oh, these mosquitoes! First time in a month he went out on a picnic, hoping to get rid of all these nasty little things floating around and demanding attention every minute -- but could not find peace even here, in the country. His wife has left him two years ago, taking their son with her -- oh, these women! He could not get promoted on his accountant job, because the boss obviously pushed him away unjustly -- oh, this boss! He still had to finish that report until Friday, and he already knew, lying here on his checkered blanket, that he was behind schedule. Oh, that job... He looked up at the obnoxiously blue and happy sky, watching the calm clouds floating by, wishing he was on of them, with no worries and no deadlines...


-- What is that lonely creature doing there? -- thought the cloud. -- these ones are always running around, back and forth, back and forth, every day, crowded around these ugly gray square-shaped lanes. Probably, -- it continued -- they simply don't know, what beauty lies outside. That seas of green and yellow, gentle waves of the endless surface, worlds of brown wrinkles and white peaks. -- Some peaks were so high that even the cloud could touch it, disturbing its constant peace with this rare interaction. But now no peaks were around, and the cloud was just hanging there in silence, contemplating distant shadows and soaking up the blue from the surrounding skies, wondering about the small creature beneath. Suddenly, the peace was disturbed: there was some turbulence and unrest at the bottom, giving a strange ticking feeling.


-- Oh, no, I did it again, -- honked the goose. He had turned his head back to check the direction, and didn't notice how all of a sudden he sunk into the white, with no up and down, left and right. -- Why am I so dumb? -- and he headed to what he considered downwards, soaring through the opaque milky space. Today he had to do another passage to catch up with his flock; he should have made a half of it, but still didn't recognize the land. -- Who invented these clouds -- he thought, finally popping out. -- Hey, I recognize that lake down there!




40% dropped out yesterday, but not you! Welcome to day fourteen :)


Here's a story that someone else submitted. Please read it and

continue it. Please don't write an ending - write a middle.


//


Hahaha, this is hilarious.


Thanks. I've never liked my writing... Too much of a science guy I suppose :)



WHAT. NO.


"I told my wife about The Long Talk, and she said not to stop replying under any circumstances, so I guess you’re stuck with me for a while."


I want to see a video of you telling your wife you can't write a few paragraphs of a story.


Or, you have a little over an hour to write and make the deadline. Go!


Rats, I knew that one would come back to haunt me :)


"I’m approaching it with little interest in becoming the last person. Not because I don’t want to, but because neither of us wants this to turn into a “chore”.”


The first few 500 words ended up costing me well over an hour just to write down what I had in my mind, so I can’t even imagine how long continuing someone else’s story might take me. It may not seem like much, but with my writing skills it takes quite a lot of effort. My wife might be angry at me for quitting, but she’d be outraged if I spent the little spare time we have together cooking up stories :)


Sam


Aw, sorry to hear that. Thanks for playing!


Thanks for having me! I’m looking forward to seeing the results.


Don’t be a stranger!


Sam


Streets and shoes, avenues. The monk got lunch. Lunch!


Get off the chair. Bath. Splash the face with cold water. Mirror. Red

eyes, cheeks begging for a shave. Fresh T-shirt. Shoes. Keys. Phone.

Doorlock -- clang. Downstairs. Fresh air. Walking feet. Earplugged.

Check facebook. Flick through others’ smiles. Step down. Cross the

street. Step up.


Next track. Next track. New message. Thumb exercise. Tweet. Link.

News. Somebody started a war. Someone got killed. Someone's starving.

Someone's got a cat in the box. The cat tries to get out. Step down.

Next track. Loud beep and tyres asphalt scream. World turns upside

down. Airplane drawing white line in the sky. Slowly. Silence.

Darkness.


-


They were walking down the lane, mother holding his hand in hers. Dry

brown leaves cracked under his feet, and he enjoyed that feeling,

sliding shoes against them. The world smelled with autumn and

everything was great. -- Mommy, why the leaves are yellow? -- That's

because they were absorbing sunrays the whole summer. -- And why the

Sun is yellow? -- It's because it is shining with light and warmth.

Hey, get out of the water. You'll gonna be all wet. Do you hear me? Do

you hear me?


-


- Do you hear me? - He saw a white ceiling and a window with a piece

of the sky in it. - Are you awake? - He realized his head was aching

as hell, but managed to turn it a bit. Brown eyes, and a caring smile.

-- Yes, -- he whispered. -- My head... Where am I?


Nope, you made it. Woo! :)


Wow, great! I was in the plane and could not send it earlier. By the

way, I learned really great things through The Long Talk. Most

importantly, that your chain method really works. There's a first kick

you need to start doing something every day, not postponing it to

'tomorrow', and then everything starts moving. It feels now I know

more about myself.


Looking forward to meetings and talks, on 27th or earlier, if you'll

happen to have time. :)


Hurrrray! That was the whole point so I'm glad it sunk in :)


That's real design. Actually I'm excited. I used to seek for solutions

in creating specific tools -- apps or websites. But humans never will

feel responsible towards apps. So the real solution here lies in

creating environments for specific social interactions. Probably

that's nothing new -- all these groups for curing alcoholism and stuff

like that use the same principle. But, you know -- everything was

invented before, you only need to connect the dots in a right way --

and this is a really hard thing.


"Do you know why you’re here?" the polite woman said.


He looked up. First to the woman and then to the ceiling, which was made of corrugated steel, like the walls. I’m in a shipping container, he thought. Its cargo: two suited men, one suited woman, a table, two chairs, and him. He tried to imagine where the container itself might be, what was past that dull metal, but he had no recollection of getting into the container, or being dragged into the container, or being blindfolded, or anything, and so had gleaned no sensory clues to suggest whether he might be in a ship’s hull or a school hall or just hanging in space.


He focused on the cup of water in front of him. Ridges. Curved lip.


“Yes,” he said.


No quips.


If he had imagined this moment before it happened, enjoying an idle spy-hero fantasy while eating cornflakes in his PJs, he would have invented a number of excellent quips for this part of the story. Instead, he noticed he was shivering with fear. Oh! I’m crying! he thought, blinking to detach the tears and watching them land in blue spots on the legs of his scrubs. Oh, I’m wearing scrubs. I have no shoes on. I’m shivering.


He gulped.


“Yes, I know why I’m here.”


the first thing he noticed was the smell, a mix of sulphur and the acidic tang of old sweat. He called out a greeting, but there was no reply. He moved deeper into the room, the light wearing out. He heard a noise above him and noticed a stairwell. He went up.


The stairs led to a large open room that looked like it spanned the entire dimensions of the building. the old woman in the tuxedo sat in the middle of the room, rocking back and forth, holding the box in her lap.


He knew he could not ask her what it was, but he could watch. Slowly she peeled back the paper wrapping the box.


She lifted the lid.


He felt sick.


THUNK! The F-15 pilot flinched slightly, assessing the situation. It looked like everything was holding together, but maybe it would be better to land, just in case, wouldn't do to crash in the middle of this field because of some bird. He radioed back and swept back towards the gray criss-cross of tarmac. The landing strip loomed larger and larger as the plane glided down. There was Smith, lounging in the shade chatting with someone -- Gutierrez, maybe?




15% dropped out yesterday, but not you. Welcome to day fifteen :)


Endings can be hard but if done correctly they can bring resolution

and relief. Sometimes stopping makes you appreciate what happened.

Today I'd like you to complete this story:


Mavericks street. Can you see me? How many fingers are here? Can you move your fingers? No! Don't try to get up until the ambulance is here, I already called 911.


Sirens. People rushing. Stretchter. Sensors. A loud beep. Breathing bottle. Needles. A loud beep. Sirens. Tires screeching. A loud beep. Hospital. Running. Operation room. Massive bleeding. A loud beep. Phone ringing. Adrenaline 500mg. Stabilize him. B+, 2 units. A loud beep. Phone ringing. Stay with me. Stay with me. A loud beep. 


But the water is fun, can I stay just a little bit longer? It is warm and nice and nothing can harm me now, mommy. Right? Mommy?


A long beep.


Whoaaaaaa I looked up who started the story (it had two authors and

then you were the third) and nope. Not from Europe.


But it was sort of an epiphany. I went back and read each day on its

own to understand this person. I was looking for things like

"location, age, job" but instead I found a story that's wayyyyy more

interesting overall.


Then I found the person on LinkedIn and realized the LinkedIn profile

had no bearing on what I learned from him through this activity.


Maybe there's a book here. Maybe I take each person and show all their

responses, one after another. Starting with people that dropped out

right away. So it'd be like this:


Person #1 was asked "what's your favorite color"

Response: Green

[dropped out]


Person #2 was asked "what's your favorite color"

Response: Red


... was asked "what's your favorite animal"

Response: Goose


Obviously the answers are more in-depth than that. But that format

could be interesting. Because whoever makes it to the very end is the

one where you see their whole story. It's the longest bit.


And I think I'd do it anonymously. You wouldn't know who anyone is.


What do you think?


Yes! I think that would be an amazing use of this material.

I was just thinking about that earlier too. Like, you're learning so much about us. And we're learning things about you, but it's disproportionate.


//


Follow up thought: it would be integrating to send out someone's answer to a question and ask the rest of the list what they can tell you about that person.

(if you're worried about people feeling uncomfortable or on the spot, you have explicit permission to use one of mine)




1) Yeah, the disproportionate thing has been mentioned by many. One in

particular was getting more and more frustrated with me. Half-joking.

But clearly getting annoyed. I think of it as a feature, not a bug.

But it's fascinating how it makes people uncomfortable, and in

hindsight it makes a lot of sense. Hm.


2) Yeah, I've been thinking about that. As the list gets smaller I

wonder if I can send everyone's remaining responses to the rest of the

group. I may do that when I'm comfortable sharing the current number.


1. Is just the cost of doing business. Doesn't bother me. I feel like I can learn a lot about what's important to you by your projects..


Admittedly, I also get to see you in person sometimes.


Turns out it wasn’t Gutierrez. Or Smith. It was the butler all along.


The butler didn’t waste any time – and his machete skills were world-class. After leaving a gash in the gas tank, all the pilot could think was:


– Thank god the butler didn’t ignite the gas tank.

– Eject. Now.


There’s a pregnant pause in any ejection, but here the pilot is just fearing for his life. There could be more machetes, you know? Who knows whether the butler is armed to the teeth. After all, isn’t every butler?


Well, at least this one was. The pilot dodged gatling gun fire for thirty seconds until he came to a soft rest on the deck of the carrier. And that’s when the kung fu sequence began.


I’m sure you know how this ended: butler thrown overboard, beheaded, rivers of blood, pilot retires to the French Riviera, etc. Anyway, it’s all a rich tapestry to be told at some other time. Good night! Tip your waiters!


The Long Talk - Day Sixteen




No one dropped out yesterday. Welcome to day sixteen :)


I've attached some stories from the last few days.


Today tell me what you'd do if friends came to where you live and

wanted to experience it. Assume they're from another country and

haven't been to your area before.


Museums! I am blessed to live in a city with OH-SO-MANY GREAT museums.


Food. The weird one. Cow stomach! Pig ear!


Should we take the high-speed train somewhere? Yes we should. No matter where. It is amazing in and on itself.


Sightseeing, OMG what a great city this one is and how little do we appreciate it.


Terraces, idle there after lunch, getting mildly drunk until mid-afternoon. Switch to beer to avoid getting too hammered. Keep on chugging until it is dark and time for dinner. Have dinner right there. Contemplate life. Have a walk to their hotel, contemplate the lovely place that my city becomes at night.



SO COOL!


//


Come around early and drop your stuff. Let’s walk to Cafe 338 and grab brunch – it’s not a hip place but it’s really friendly and the food is good. We can cut through the field behind the house to get there. It’s probably Sunday, so let’s go to Columbia Road and walk through the very busy flower market. We can walk down to Brick Lane and see the goings on there, and end up in Spitalfields Market. These are all very busy on a Sunday so maybe we’d want to take it down a notch. Let’s follow the canal all the way from Dalston up to Angel and get a pint by the water. We can go to the Duke of Cambridge and have some lunch. Then home (via Allpress for a coffee) for a bit of a rest. I will have a nap, you can do your emails or whatever. Early evening, let’s walk down to Hackney Road – grab a drink if we feel like it, then have something to eat at Mr Buckley’s. Then maybe we booked to see someone play at the Oval Space until late. Fun!


Telephone poles made of wood??


Er, the power line ones. They're like always wood in America but apparently in Russia they're more like concrete pillars?


I'm amazed that's a novelty for him. Neat.


Probably that's pretty standard:


- places -- show the most loved ones and share the love. In my city

the best things are night walks, rooftop views, and some museums and

parks.

- food -- show the local stuff. In Russia it means soups, pancakes,

'pirozhki' - a special type of pie. And lots of tea.

- traditions. I could arrange a nice vodka-drinking session :)) but

usually there are much more small nuances in doing things that are

specific to your place and that are fun to share.

- language. Language influences the way we think a lot, so it's nice

to explain some unique words and phrases.

- music! Usually there are many nice local artists which are totally

unknown outside the country. So everywhere I go I try to ask people

what they love to listen -- and sometimes get really great new stuff.


I had a very nice experience with touching another culture during my

flight to the US. I flew with Iceland Air, and they designed the whole

experience in a way that lures passangers into their country. For

example, the chair cushions have different icelandic words on them,

with English translation; the enterntainment system offers a wide

variety of Icelandic music and films. And here's a pillow -- I had to

make a photo of it because it was so great :)




Awesome! :)




Yesterday someone dropped out, so now we’re down to five people!


Today tell me about one of your first boyfriends or girlfriends.


Just five! Woah. 


I met my first gf at university, kinda late. First girl I kissed. I don't remember much about when we started dating, I remember her name & face, the first kiss...


We were both studying biology, I planned on majoring in molecular biology (it didn't happen) she wanted to major in general bio, get a PhD, move out of the country and have kids. 


I don't keep in touch with her but I ran into her brother a couple of years ago. She is a PhD in biology, works in Ireland, is married and has two kids. I am happy she got what she wanted in life. I didn't have my objectives so clear then but it was evident I was not the person to help her pursue hers. 


SO COOL!


//


Come around early and drop your stuff. Let’s walk to Cafe 338 and grab brunch – it’s not a hip place but it’s really friendly and the food is good. We can cut through the field behind the house to get there. It’s probably Sunday, so let’s go to Columbia Road and walk through the very busy flower market. We can walk down to Brick Lane and see the goings on there, and end up in Spitalfields Market. These are all very busy on a Sunday so maybe we’d want to take it down a notch. Let’s follow the canal all the way from Dalston up to Angel and get a pint by the water. We can go to the Duke of Cambridge and have some lunch. Then home (via Allpress for a coffee) for a bit of a rest. I will have a nap, you can do your emails or whatever. Early evening, let’s walk down to Hackney Road – grab a drink if we feel like it, then have something to eat at Mr Buckley’s. Then maybe we booked to see someone play at the Oval Space until late. Fun!


Okay, so here is the story.

I fell in love with a girl who lived in another city some 1500km away.

It was before internet got everywhere, so we wrote paper letters to

each other. I would go to the main post office -- which is a very

beautiful building, -- compose a letter and send it. It took a week

for my letter to travel, and then another week for her letter to

travel back. What a wait was it!


Each time I went out of the post office with a taste of stamp glue on

my tongue, I had a feeling of real conversation with someone I loved.

And I dreamed that one day I would take her by the hand and bring

here, to make this feeling match reality.


As you probably know, all dreams come true if you dream really hard.

So finally she moved to my city, and finally I brought her to the post

office. So there was the hall, there was the table I used to sit at

and write, and there was she, in person, at last.


I was 17 then, but I still remember that day very clearly.




Hello, and welcome to day twenty!


Respond with 250 words.


Today's email reminded me of a sonnet by Lope de Vega. He is regarded as the best sonnet writer in the Spanish language. The sonnet goes as follows:


Un soneto me manda hacer Violante (Violante has asked me for a sonnet)

que en mi vida me he visto en tanto aprieto; (This is the first time in my life I am in this position)

catorce versos dicen que es soneto; (they say a sonnet is made of fourteen verses)

burla burlando van los tres delante. (well, jokingly there are three before this one)


Yo pensé que no hallara consonante, (I was afraid I would not make a consonant rhyme)

y estoy a la mitad de otro cuarteto; (and I am in the middle of another quartet)

mas si me veo en el primer terceto, (but if I get to the first tercet)

no hay cosa en los cuartetos que me espante. (there would be nothing scary in the quartets)


Por el primer terceto voy entrando, (so here I am, starting the first tercet)

y parece que entré con pie derecho, (and it seems I started it with the right foot)

pues fin con este verso le voy dando. (since this verse is finishing it)


Ya estoy en el segundo, y aun sospecho (Now I am in the second and I suspect)

que voy los trece versos acabando; (I am finishing the thirteen verses)

contad si son catorce, y está hecho. (count to see if they are fourteen and it's done)


Nice, reminds me of Nirvana:


It's now time

To make it unclear

To write off lines

That don't make sense


One more special

Message to go

Then I'm done

And I can go home


I'll have to write the story on my phone this time. But it is also a part of adventure, I guess :)


This is a story about dreams.


Some people may think that dreams are just thoughts about things that someone wants to achieve. But I'm sure this is a limited view. Dreams can be lighthouses in the ocean of life, guiding people through dangerous cliffs. Dreams can provide enormous support, helping to overcome the most depressing moments. Dreams can let people do seemingly impossible things, like St. Peter's faith have let him walk on the water.


In my life dreams take a special place. I'd say my life is dream-oriented. Instead of setting goals and achieving them, I dream about things, and eventually they come into reality.


This is probably not the most effective way of living a life. But I like it. Look, how can you set a goal when you never really know yourself? What if by the time you achieve the goal you'll realize that you have changed, and this is not what you really need? Dream pursuing never has a definite plan, you always rely on your intuition and follow new circumstances. Dream is only a direction, and the actual path is always unexpected, keeping enough freedom to try yourself and learn who you actually are.


Once I suddenly started dreaming about the small city of Kostroma. For no actual reason I had a feeling that it's a place still preserving the old Russian culture, a magical town from fairy tales. As we in Russia are in a painful process of regaining our national identity, that was my hope to get some ground under my feet. But I realized there was no point of going there as a tourist. So I dreamt and waited for something to happen.


A year after, I stumbled upon a website of a truly unique band. They were singing songs and doing hip-hop declamations in a modern, but very recognizable Russian style. They've produced 40 albums by that time, and many of them were really great. (by the way, William has their 54th album now). And they were from Kostroma! So I made up their concert in St-Petersburg, they came to play, and we became really close friends. I started visiting Kostroma and discovered a whole new world, which changed my life completely. And surely Kostroma turned out to be that very town from fairy tales I was dreaming of.


One of my next dreams was about visiting the US. I don't really know why, but for many years I was sure that something great is waiting for me there. Still I knew there was not much sense going as a tourist, so I kept dreaming and waited for something to happen.. And you know the rest of this story :)


What could be more thrilling and inspiring than a dream coming true? This is what happening to me now thanks to you. It's hard for me to get the right words for this case, so I'll just say -- dear Jon, thank you so much for your invitation! Coming here and meeting all of you makes a really big change in my life. To me, that's also a piece of perfect design. Good design lets people achieve their goals, while perfect design fulfills dreams. Sounds neat, isn't it? :)




Not only did no one drop out yesterday, we've added a person that got

accidentally dropped.


Today write me a story about a fight you were involved in. Even better

if it had no good resolution.


I got in a verbal fight with an ex-landlord's agent. I was in Starbucks in the Borders on Charing Cross Road (now closed) when he called. The ceiling had sprung a leak and soaked  my possessions including a new TV that I had to dispose of because I thought it might electrocute me at any moment. I think I wanted him to reimburse me for it and he wouldn't.


Looking back, he was probably right but was being a real dick about it. At one point I shouted "do you think I'm an idiot?" quite loudly and everyone looked up from their newspapers.


Then the call just kind of ended.


I hate to fight, and usually try to avoid such situation. But

sometimes it were happening.


Once me and my friends decided to spend a New Year somewhere at a

different place. We chose a city called Yaroslavl. It's an old

beautiful town. After arriving there morning of the 1st of January, we

spent the whole day strolling along empty streets and hiding in cafes

from the cold. After sunset we went to another bank of the river,

where some old beautiful churches stand surrounded by small private

houses. Walking carelessly in the dark, we talk about architecture and

didn't notice three sleezy guys approaching us. They started a

meaningless chat and suddenly began beating us up. I was scared and

lost, not knowing what to do, when an extremely strong leg kick

arrived at my face. At that moment I started being angry, and hit the

guy straight into his nose, feeling the softness of his face under my

fist. Yuck! Then the guy started to pull something out of his pocket,

and I decided to run. We ran to the shop on the corner of the street,

bleeding and asking for help. The guys backed away, not willing to

show up in the public, and we had a chance to catch a car to get to

the railway station. The driver said it's a dangerous place, and

showed us his big baseball bat, which helped him a lot in settling the

conflicts down.


On returning back home, we had very funny faces, telling everyone

about the kind of adventure we had to experience. But anyway it was

fun.


Many years ago I used to play basketball in a playground near my home. We had a nice 40/50 people group going and most weekends you could play from 9AM to 2PM nonstop in two courts side by side, short games to 10 or 15 points while other pickup teams were waiting in the sides to get in. It was really friendly, people playing there usually had some "real" experience, having played in proper teams etc. 


One day this guy who lived on my block comes to the playground for the first time, he gets "drafted" and starts to play. So far so good. At some moment, he ends up defending me. Now, I was a much better player that him at that time, I was playing national leagues and he had never played basketball in any serious way so it was a slaughter. At some point, he got tired and while I was in the air doing a layup he pushed me, shoved me really. I fell to the floor, someone called the fault and I asked him not to do that again because "we can get hurt". The guy was inexperienced, it is a rookie mistake, nothing to get angry for, you know.


The very next play they were attacking on our side, I cut a pass and ran to their ring, jump to go for the dunk and... got shoved by the same guy. This time it was a little bit more scary, I was running fast, going to the ring hard and I hadn't noticed he was any near. I hit my arms on the board and hanged to the basket's structure to avoid a bad fall. Once stable, I let myself fall to the floor and, as soon as I was on my feet, punched him hard in the face. So hard I broke his nose quite badly. Blood everywhere... the works. I then said: "I told you we could get hurt, see?"


Worst part of this was seeing him in the block for months with a face mask over his broken nose, he was more or less cool about it (let's just say that we never became friends) but I was mortified. It taught me not to get in fights and to control my temper. And that is why I don't have many more interesting stories about fights ;)




I was traveling. Now I'm back. Welcome to day twenty-three!


You may have scars, broken bones, tattoos, and piercings. Tell me

about all of them. How has your body been uniquely changed by your

life decisions?


When I was a toddler I fell and hit my head on the corner of a coffee table my dad made but hadn't rounded the corners of. It made a cut on the outside edge of my left eye. Luckily it missed the actual eye. There is a faint scar there.


When I was 19, I got drunk on my birthday. I wasn't a big drinker and it got to me pretty bad. I don't remember this happening but I must have stumbled into the bathroom, fallen and hit my head on the hand drier. I do remember it was a custom-made one for the bar, and the makers must have thought angled metal looked better, so had failed to round the edges. It made a cut on the outside edge of my right eye. Luckily it missed the actual eye. There is a faint, but slightly less faint scar there.


I don't have many scars / modifications. My body has been changed most by nutritional / sporting decisions than any other factors... but, let me think:


- I am circumcised, I suppose this counts as a body modification and a scar.

- there is a very little (around 1 inch) scar in my left wrist I don't really remember how I got that cut but I do remember thinking when it was scarifying that it made no sense to get a scar for a little cut as that.

- there is a bigger (3 inches?) scar in my right elbow from a bicycle fall

- I got a wart removed from the crown of my head, it left a small scar that I almost never get to see.

- I got a very little, very faint scar in my face, just under my left eye, where a dog scratched me while playing, nowadays I almost can't see it in the mirror.

- the third finger of my left hand is slightly crooked from a basketball injury


And I think that would be all. I have never broken a bone, btw.


The fate has been merciful to me. There were only few cases so far. Once I was traveling on the old and slow car for 800km. While adjusting my seat, my little finger got caught by the hard-moving lever. It was so painful! I could not release the finger myself, able to do it only with the help from others. After 15 years I can still feel that damage in the finger.


Another bad day I was chopping some wood for fire, at the highly beach. Suddenly the axe jumped aside and hit my leg. My friends had to bring me to the nearby hospital. I still have the scar.


And may be that's it!




Welcome to day twenty-four!


Today write yourself two letters. One is to you as a ten year old. Another is to you as a sixty-five year old.


Hi! I was away so am legitimately out! Thanks for the experiment, it was fun!


Basil


Sad to see you go!


The sheer amount of interesting data I've gotten has been pretty great. I'll show you when we're done :)


Yes that would be great, thanks! Looking forward to it.


Let's go for the first one.


(this one would be sent in Spanish, my English wasn't good enough at the time, though I already spoke some).


Hey, kiddo:


There are a few things I'd want you to consider, more or less you are going to be right for all of your life, so don't worry too much. Have fun, play, do whatever you want. Just keep this letter and read it again in ten years time. Be happy, live life without regrets ;)


Hello again! keep playing sports when you stop being in a team. Also, the allergies you just got need attention and a vaccine, you don't want to end up with asthma. Now, take note of this date: june, 13, 2014. And these numbers: 16, 18, 22, 28, 46 / 09, 11. You will know what to do with them when the time comes :)


/me


The second one:


Hey!


No need to thank me for the nice life you've got with all those millions, buddy. The lotto trick was dirty but probably successful. 


I am not sure if you (we? I?) have managed to keep being happy and I hope we still don't regret many things. Sorry for not taking care of our body until quite late, I tried to fix that too but we have most likely been lazy and like food so much... anyway, I hope you are still kicking and not having major health problems (specially problems that are my fault, you know).


Are mom and dad still around? I they surely must be old if they are still alive but they both have very long-lived relations so... I hope that if they are there they still have their wits and that if they aren't we were there for them when their time came.


Anyway, I don't want to bother you a lot and you already know what I was going to say so... I suppose you have some golf to play. Take care.


/me


Wow! Great task!


So the first will go like --

Hey there! Everything's going to be great, eventually. Just believe in yourself a little more. Don't be afraid to stand for yourself. Don't be shy to be yourself, because staying true to what you are is one of the things why we are here. 


And you'd better apply to some university in Moscow when it's time. Don't stay here!


***


And here's the second one.


Hi there,

So how did it all work out? Have you finished any project you've started? Have you written a book? Have you started a family? Did you try to go to another country for several years? Are you happy now?


***


Actually I wrote such messages to future me from time to time. Every time it was great to discover them, realizing that all my wishes and expectations have changed with time, and the things had happened I never could even imagine before. Each year brings something completely new, and the world is colored in a different tint again.




Why does morning exist 

This isn't a haiku 

But counting syllables is hard


1. Awesome Foundation

2. Helloworld (a side project I'm working on with a friend)

3. Biking 


1. Indefinitely. As long as I check my personal once a day, I'll most likely respond. The main dangers are me getting bored or going on a trip with no connectivity. 

2. I could see someone doing a couple hundred days pretty easily. 

3. What are you going to do with it? You could ask data questions and visualize the answers, or philosophical questions and learn things, or personal questions and get to know people better. 


Never count on the 8 to be on time.


My younger brother learned to run very early, before he developed his fall reflex or proper proprioception. As a result, he was constantly getting hurt in one way or another, and split his lip about once a week (on average).


When he was 2 years old, my cousins and grandmother visited us. We were understandably worked up to have so many extra people around and my brother expressed it by running laps around the house at bedtime. Unfortunately for him, my parents had folded out a futon for our guests, significantly changing the layout of our living room. On an excited pass through the room he smacked into the edge of the futon, splitting his lip.


My mother and grandmother sat with him to soothe him until the bleeding stopped. Unfortunately, it didn't. They stayed up with him until early morning so that they could call the pediatrician, hoping to avoid the ER. After hours of sitting up with a bleeding toddler they got through - and were promptly instructed to go to the hospital (my grandmother was quite excited to be there for her grandson's first trip to the ER). So they changed him into a fresh shirt and diaper and drove to the emergency room. By the time they arrived, he and my mother were covered in blood. They caught the eye of an elderly woman who was also waiting in the ER. My brother looked at her and grinned wide, blood trickling out of the corners of his mouth.


After a bit of a wait, they were seen by a doctor, who promptly cauterized my brother's lip (he had torn his frenulum labii superioris). They kept him under observation for a while to make sure that the cauterization would hold. Tired of the attention, he fussed until my mother put him down.


He promptly ran into the corner of the examining table and split his bottom lip.



My dad believes that leadership means taking care of your people. He believes that if you can help someone, you do. And even if you can't, you try. He believes in science and reason and engineering, and that if we get detailed enough we can understand things (probably why he's a scientist). He believes in people, too, that people are good and trustworthy and want to help (he has gotten burned a lot of times, but he still presses on).


He would probably agree with your dad about the title thing. He hates being called Dr., even though he's a practicing MD.


I am super introverted, so parties are a mixed bag. I'm unlikely to be the center of attention, so you can find me at the edges talking in a small group or one-on-one. Or standing by myself looking vaguely lost and/or shell shocked.


I'm not sure who I am to my friends. I'm just kind of me. I suppose it varies by person. I'm often an advice giver (I try to be a good sympathetic listener, but I often get explicitly asked for advice).


My family is funny. My mom has always seen me for who I am, but my dad has tended to look at me in a very idealized way that doesn't line up with who I really am. He loves me, but it kind of stresses me out.




I like it when men aren't afraid to not be macho

I like it when women are confident

I like it when city planners build bike infrastructure

I like it when tourists try to learn the real city, not just the tourist traps

When I'm traveling, I like cities that have clean, efficient public transit

I like when kids show empathy for other people

I like it when adults take responsibility for their actions

I like it when the elderly mentor young people

I like it when friends look out for one another

I like when the weather is sunny, warm, and dry

I like when designers respect and understand engineers

I like when co-workers help one another



I told _______________ that I liked how they _____________.

Haven't done this one yet today! I try to make a habit of it, though, ever since that Scott Berkun thing on thanking people.


True story, I have almost no recollection of how to write a book report. I think you're supposed to have read a book and summarize the plot or something?


At any rate...

If you haven't read East of Eden, you should. It is the best thing Steinbeck has ever written (and I've read quite a bit of Steinbeck, thanks to various high school projects). It's a sensational piece of fiction that significantly shaped my worldview when I read it as a teenager.


The central theme of the book is that morality is a choice. This is explored via an allegory that echoes (in multiple) the story of Cain and Abel, as well as some direct exploration of the original biblical text. Steinbeck's message is simple: we can choose to be better people than we are.


That's all I'm going to say about the book in this medium. If you haven't read it, you should. I can lend you a copy.



I went and read this, after fleeing the second half of HIVE.


This is good, although I question whether we need to revisit very many things. Is it so terrible to experience life from moment to moment, without getting caught up in past experiences? Maybe there is value to both ways. Re-examining something will teach you more about it, but maybe you would have learned the same thing from looking at something new but reminiscent of that first thing. You don't do the same math problem 1000 times to learn calculus.


Ironic, coming from me, because I am very fond of rediscovery and I wish that tech companies would put as much work into thoughtful, serendipitous rediscovery as they do into initial discovery.


I love this and share it with many people:

http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality/answer/Michael-Wolfe


I suspect that if I were told to look at a fish, I wouldn't unless I was rather scared of the teacher. All I could think about while reading the anecdote was "Is it fresh? You could gut it and cook it."


Hah! I am giving $1000 on July 1. Haven't decided who I'm picking yet. 



I yawned, reaching over to smack my alarm off, and sat up. I stared at the wall for a few minutes to savor the early morning quiet.


“Ben! Breakfast!”


My mom has never been a morning person. As in, my dad tried to wake her up to watch the sunrise on their honeymoon and she locked him out of the hotel room for three hours. But she loves special occasions even more than sleep. Occasions like her only child’s 16th birthday.


I rushed to get ready so that she wouldn’t have to wait for too long. I had no idea what she had planned, but I didn’t want to ruin her excitement. Probably some special breakfast, if my last 15 birthdays were anything to go by.


“I made you stuffed french toast! And there’s a surprise for you later. But I won’t ruin it. You’ll just have to wait until after school.”


She was giddy with excitement, and I have to admit, it was contagious. I asked her questions about the surprise as I ate my breakfast (delicious), until my dad strolled in with his coffee and tapped his watch. Shoot. I didn’t want to get a tardy on my birthday.


I put my plate in the dishwasher, hugged my parents, and ran out the door with my backpack. I spotted Mike across the street and ran over. He punched me in the shoulder and wished me a happy birthday before launching into his latest crazy idea.


“Man, you know we are so scared to just let go. Like, imagine walking down the street with your eyes closed. You think I’m nuts right?”


“Mike, I know you’re nuts.”


“Ok, whatever, but, like, blind people can’t see ever! And they walk down the street all the time.”


“What?”


“Their brains aren’t any different from ours, not really. We’re all human. We’ve all got human brains.”


“Dude I’m pretty sure their brains are different.”


“Yeah, ok, but just like because they’ve got more practice at it. If we practiced we’d be great at it too. Look – I’ve been practicing a bunch, and I’ve totally got it down. It’s like a crazy sixth sense, you’ve gotta try it.”


“Uh huh.”


“No, really, watch. I’ll walk the rest of the way to school with my eyes closed. Just watch me and be amazed.”


I had to admit, he was pretty good at it. He kept on a straight line and handled all the little bumps in the pavement (I caught myself wondering how many times he’d faceplanted on this particular stretch of sidewalk when I wasn’t around). He even crossed the street with his eyes closed, biting his lip and cocking his head to listen for cars before stepping off the curb.


Problem is, some cars are really quiet. And sometimes their drivers aren’t expecting teenager boys with eyes screwed shut to walk in front of them.


Shit.


“MIKE!”




——



I bolted into the street and shoved him as hard as I could before my body slammed sideways and the world blurred. Then everything went black.



BEEP BEEP BEEP


I startled awake and instinctively smacked my alarm clock. Problem was, it wasn’t in the right place and I ended up banging my wrist on a cup. I opened my eyes blearily, wrist stinging.


Everything came rushing back to me – Mike and his stupid game, the car, everything going black. No way had I just walked away from that.


Maybe I was in a hospital. No… too many decorations. Not enough medical equipment. In fact, no medical equipment.


I lifted up my arm, slowly, afraid of what I was going to see.


Nothing. No scrapes, no bruises, no scars. Not even the scar on my elbow, the one I got jumping off the swings on a dare when I was nine.


I dropped my arm again. What the hell.


Oh boy, I think I’ll throw in the towel here. This is getting way beyond my skillset :)


Do keep me posted on how things end up and let me know what you learned!


Cheers,


Sam


Mike walked in smiling. 


immediately and for a long time i thought (or said, im not sure) ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck


because c'mon. I'm dead. He's dead. This is what it looks like I guess. All pretty and perfect and unbruised and unscraped in a big decorated room with misplaced cups. I think thats in the bible. I wasn't exactly planning to die on my sixteenth birthday. I hadn't really thought much about death at all. Well mine anyway. My parents death, that haunted me a lot. I would wake up in cold sweats thinking about them being gone.


My dad walked in next. He tapped his watch and smiled. I didn't really get it. 


I looked back at Mike. What the shit? He had a beard. I looked back at my dad, he looked older.


"Where's mom I asked?" And he smiled but it was different, and it was only then I thought to ask "Where am I, *exactly*?"


"You're awake bro, that's what matters. And you're timing couldn't be better," said Mike as he pulled a small flask from his pocket, grinning.


A doctor cleared his throat, looked disapprovingly at Mike, and stepped towards me.


"Ben, you've been asleep for a very long time."


It turns out I was in a coma for five years.


While everyone else graduated high school, then graduated college (or did the shit you do when you do neither) I was just all tucked in, belly full of french toast (I guess that went out the colostomy bag pretty early) getting skinny as fuck and developing bedsores.


Like others who have had similar recoveries I became a bit of a media darling for about thirty seconds. The attention moved a lot of strangers to write me. Some talked about how, in a way, I skipped the nastiest most awkward parts of my life and got to just jump in to early adulthood.


This was fucking idiotic, of course. I still hadn't read a book more complicated than tom Sawyer and I still didn't have a high school diploma. People like that scrubbed floors for the rest of their lives, hardly the jump into early adult hood that I wanted.


Other people wanted to know what I experienced in the coma (nothing), what I remembered about the accident ("MIKE!"), and whether I had learned anything (nothing. I was in a coma for five fucking years.)


About a week after I woke up it started to get harder to see. The doctor's couldn't explain why or what, but I knew the only thing that mattered: a few weeks later I was blind.


The next year I was taking a walk, tap tap tapping my cane as I crossed the street. Suddenly my body slammed sideways and I was dizzy. Before I lost consciousness, I heard a familiar voice, "BEN!"


This time I did not wake up.


Conveniently, Valentin just got into town yesterday. We got dinner at Smith ("American food"). Then we walked around Capitol Hill. He pointed out things he'd seen in movies that he was excited to see in real life (like telephone poles made of wood). We went by Cal Anderson park and watched people playing bike polo for a while and talked about storytelling.


On Thursday I'm going to show him Microsoft in the morning.


Never had one! (wow that was easy)


250 words

(I'll send a real response later, but seriously man)


//


The thing people never tell you about being mature is how lonely it is for so long. Because when you grow up prematurely, for whatever reason (and there are lots of reasons), that doesn’t mean your peers have done the same. So you spend years and years surrounded by people who are worrying about things that you’ve realized just don’t matter. They’re playing on an entirely different level, one that is really far away from where you are.


So you’re locked out of your peer group. And it’s not even because you’re bullied or hated or anything (although sometimes you are, but it’s usually for other reasons or no reason at all). It’s because you can’t connect with them, because you’ve left the place where they are and when you look back on it you don’t really want to be there, even when you do.


Your next best hope is to make friends with adults. But as much as you’ve grown up, they have their own peers to connect to. They talk to you, and they respect you, but it’s not quite the same as being friends. You aren’t going to call them up and hang out.


So you do what you can: you grind your teeth and plow through it one tedious day after another. Some days are better, some are worse. Sometimes you get lucky and find someone else to keep you company on your weird journey.


Eventually you grow up and the problem resolves itself. Thank god.


When I was 10 my mom had a work friend who had 2 sons about the same age as me and my brother. We weren't really friends, but we played together whenever our parents hung out (and they had an N64, which was very compelling). So one day we were hanging out in their room playing video games while ours mothers chatted. And the older boy told me that he had started studying Taekwondo. Then he began to demonstrate his newfound skills by knocking me down several times. I told him to stop, but he didn't listen. Frustrated, I tried to punch him in the arm to get his attention.


I missed, and hit him square in the face. His nose started bleeding and he immediately ran upstairs crying to tell on me. By the time I got there his mother was yelling at him for fighting outside of the studio.


It's the most decisive victory I've ever had.


Scars

You already heard about the one on my face. That same accident also gifted me a gnarly scar on my right pinky and my right elbow.


The scar on my right elbow matches the one on my left elbow, which I got when I got hit by a car two summers ago. (me and bikes, man)


I have approximately a bajillion scars on my hands and forearms courtesy of raising a cat from the age of 5 weeks. Most of them have faded away by now.


My favorite scar (well, it's got some competition from the face one, but it's close and this one is way older) is the one on my right index finger.


When I was ~3 years old I had a pet rat. Her name was George, and we were pals. Anyhow, when I was 4 we moved to California, and we brought George. My parents unpacked everything in pieces, and at one point they put George's cage on their bed until they figured out where she should actually be. Being a small child, I wasn't really helping with the packing, so I went to hang out with George. I stuck my little kid fingers through the chicken wire (if you don't supplement the cage with chicken wire, your rats squeeze out and get themselves into trouble). George, being a very friendly rat, immediately scampered over and put her paws on my finger. Unfortunately, she slipped and accidentally scratched me.


It wasn't a deep cut at all, and I don't remember it bleeding (or hurting), but I have had the scar for the last 21 years of my life. It's got some serious staying power, but I'm worried that it's getting fainter. I'll miss it if it goes away.


Broken bones

As you can learn on the about page of my website, I once broke my toe by dropping a laptop on it.


I was staying with my (paternal, rather Chinese) grandmother for a weekend one summer while I was interning(ish) in Chicago. She put me up in my aunt's old bedroom, which had a lot of stuff in it. So I had to squeeze my things in around everything else, and I tried to not mess up the room too much. Anyway, I put my laptop on the dresser, at about chest height, and it wouldn't fit all the way on. I figured it was ok though, because the center of gravity was over the dresser. I was wrong.


The laptop fell edge down straight onto my toe. When it hit my foot I remember the pain being so bad that I momentarily forgot to breathe, and I completely lost the ability to make sound for several minutes (this was a good thing, as my grandmother had just gone to bed in the other room). Because it hit edge down, it also removed a significant portion of the skin on my toe, and I immediately started bleeding. So then I got to hobble around the house in immense pain, trying to be as quiet as possible, to look for bandaids. I did eventually find one bandaid in the entire 2-story house.


The next day I strategically positioned myself to keep tables in between my grandmother and my foot so that she wouldn't notice my injury. My parents continue to be baffled by the decision; my cousins, who are around my age and live in the same city as my grandmother, immediately agreed that they would have done the same.


I didn't actually figure out I'd broken it until 3 months later, when I asked my dad why there was a weird lump on the bone (he explained that this is what happens when you break a bone and it knits back together).


Tattoos

I don't have any tattoos. I am not opposed to the idea of getting one, but I don't foresee doing it proactively. There's nothing that I want permanently etched on my skin at the moment.


Piercings

I don't have any piercings either. Some piercings look cool but to be honest I've never entirely understood the whole culture around punching holes in yourself so that you can more easily attach shiny things to yourself. And I really don't get why earlobes are ok but the rest of your head/face is taboo.


2 letters, handwritten.




Yes.



Here's the letter. Explanation pending device charge.






//


And what this is:


The Long Talk is a game that Jon Bell put together, with very simple rules: every day, he sends out an email with a challenge of some sort (anything from "tell me your favorite color" to "donate $10 to charity") to a hidden mailing list (i.e. nobody knows who else is on the list), and each person on the list has a day to respond to him. If you respond, you stay on the list another day. If you don't, you get dropped. That's it. Sometimes it's a fun way for Jon to learn about you. Sometimes it's a prompt that makes you really dig in and learn something about yourself. And sometimes you get to interact, anonymously, with the other people on the list.



So, a random character? All right.


Tall, skinny, blond hair. He's a nice guy through and through - works in communications and fundraising at a small urban nonprofit. He lives in the city, in a small bachelor apartment. He's fairly neat but not obsessive. It's a good thing he doesn't have roommates, because they'd probably be bothered by his long days and irregular schedule.


That and his late-night crimefighting. He's got some medium grade superpowers, enough to keep him safe at night (and powers are incredibly rare).


The problem is, he's starting to develop a bit of a soft spot for a certain (very confident, attractive, and unfortunately careless with the law) villain who might not be quite as evil as we've been led to believe.


//


He starts a normal day at work - prepping for a big fundraiser. After a long day of thankless work (but excellent company) he goes home and switches into crimefighting mode. He interrupts a certain villain in the middle of a bank heist, and they're duking it out when an indiscriminate mob interruption steers things south. Our charming villain manages to get them both out of there and establish enough of a truce to have a brief moment before parting ways.


My guy needs a name. How about Christian.


//


Christian is reading over some expense reports. He's worried about the budget; if they can't pull in more donations they may need to lay off another employee and scale back their programs. He's determined to make sure that this fundraiser goes off smoothly. He's also preoccupied with a mysterious thief who's been breaking into vaults.


He looks up from his work and notices a teenage girl staring at him. He hasn't seen her here before, but something about her feels familiar. He smiles and raises his teacup.


She blushes and buries her face in her book again, but he waits patiently for her to look up. She catches his eye and holds it this time. She starts to open her mouth to say something, and suddenly his phone goes off. He jumps, grabbing the phone, and answers it. It's the new lawyer who's agreed to provide some pro bono support - he knows it's late, but does Christian have a few minutes? He has some questions about some of their paperwork.



I disapprove of this Olivia-Christian romance. For one, she's far too young. And she has a boyfriend.


Also Christian might be gay. I haven't figured that one out yet, but Olivia is definitely not his type.


//


Olivia shut her book and rushed out of the cafe, ears burning. It was bad enough that her boyfriend no longer seemed to listen to anything she said. And now this beautiful stranger and his friend had made a fool of her, after only a few minutes of eye contact.


She slumped against a nearby wall. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she do anything right?


"Are you all right, miss?"


She looked up and met his eyes. Her heart stuttered, and she couldn't quite remember why she had been so angry at this man.


"Listen, my friend, he didn't mean anything by it... he's, well, he's a bit different. It's nothing about you in particular. You seem like a very nice young woman..."


He trailed off uncomfortably, shoulders slumped. Olivia realized her mouth was half-open, and she shut it self consciously, trying to think of what to say.


"I... well, let's try this again? I-I'm Christian."


He held out one hand. She blinked and grasped it.


"I'm Olivia."


"I, uh, saw that you left your drink. Maybe I can buy you another? At a different cafe, I think, Joseph is still talking to some poor sap about courtship rituals and religion..."


"Th-that would be nice," she sputtered. "Thank you."


--


He led her a few blocks to a quiet side street and opened a weather door. She glanced around uncomfortably before following him. Was this how people got kidnapped and sold into slavery rings? At any rate, it was too late for her now.


The room she stepped into was warm and cozy. Yellowed photographs and posters covered the walls, and cozy chairs bumped up against weathered tables. A rosy-cheeked woman stood behind the counter wiping a pitcher. Save for her, the room was empty.


"Christian! It's been so long! And you have a new friend, is she working with you now?"


"Oh, no, nothing like that. She's just a friend in need of a quiet spot, I think. Olivia, this is Claudia."


"Pleased to meet you dear. Take your time with the menu - I'll make Christian's drink first. He always has the same thing anyway, not like that boyfriend of his who can't make up his mind. Really, something different every time he comes in, some people cannot commit to anything."


Christian flushed. Olivia couldn't help noticing how well his rosy cheeks offset his fair hair. But, a boyfriend! And she had one of those as well. Desperate to clear her head, she buried herself in the menu.


"I suppose it's as good a time as any to mention that we broke up..."


"Just as well, dear, he wasn't good enough for you anyway. Really now, an ad man? For my Christian? You need to find someone who cares as much about the world as you do."


Christian coughed uncomfortably and mumbled something unintelligible. Sympathizing with his discomfort, Olivia cleared her throat and held up the menu. She pointed to one of the beverages (she wasn't sure what half the words in the description meant) and said "Can I try this?"


"Of course dear, I'll be just a minute. You two find a table and I'll bring everything over."


--


The drink was delicious, warm and delicate. Olivia couldn't quite identify the flavors, but they flowed together perfectly. She sipped delicately, and turned to Christian.


"So, what do you do? Why did she think I worked with you?"


He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow. He looked so serious, and Olivia imagined photographing him like this.


"I work at a nonprofit. We are still quite small, so I do a lot of things, but mostly fundraising and communications. Sometimes we have interns - Claudia probably assumed you were one of them. I bring them here sometimes when they need a break - it's good to have a place where you don't think about work so much."


"And what do you do outside of work? You seem like someone who would have interesting hobbies. I mean..."


Olivia cut herself off. Stupid, she thought. Always putting your foot in your mouth. An unreadable look flashed across Christian's face, and he composed himself so quickly she wasn't sure it had happened at all. But she was sure that just for a moment he had looked as though there was something he wanted to say.


"Honestly? I spend most of my time working... There is so much to do, and we are not doing so well financially right now, so more falls on me. But I shouldn't bother you with my problems - I hardly know a thing about you."


Sensing a plea in his tone, she told him about her school, and summer break. He frowned when Olivia described how distant her boyfriend had become, his face darkening when she mentioned the "jokes" he had played on her the first month of break. She told him about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and how it inspired her to go to the cafe alone to think. She talked about her parents, and her hopes for university, and how she had no idea what to specialize in. By the time her drink was dry she felt like she'd told him everything there was to know about herself. She stretched slowly, and Christian stood up and carried their mugs to the counter before opening the door.


"It's getting late, and I don't want your parents to worry. But I enjoyed meeting you, and I only regret that it came about in such an uncomfortable way. If you want... well, if you are interested, I'd be happy to have you come help us out. I can't really afford to pay you, but I think you might find it interesting and I think we could find some other way to make it worth your time. Here, uh, you can always come by."


He handed her a slightly frayed business card and hugged her briefly before disappearing into the night.




1. Nice guy sits in the backseat of a car, looking self-conscious.

2. She's dressed for summer and texting her friends.

3. He has a green shirt, a ponytail, a tray of tapas dishes, and a cool accent.

4. She's both taller and friendlier than average.

5. A man in a checked shirt and jeans sits alone, eating chips and fiddling with his laptop.

6. With a pink shirt, shorts, and sunglasses, he's all set for the weekend.

7. Quiet, focused, and determined; the loudest thing about him is his shoes.

8. He's the kind of person who starts walking before the walk signal lights up.

9. Her bright blue and green kit doesn't really go with her white and black bike, but at least her bike shoes match it. 

10. Tights, a long-sleeved dress, and a headscarf seems very uncomfortable for July but she doesn't look bothered.


This is the view from our backyard, because it's more evocative to me than the front of the house. All you can see from the driveway is the garage and the door, which gives you no sense of the scale of the house (it's a split-level on a hill).


My parents live with my brother (age 20) and our 3 cats, 2 of whom are unquestionably inside cats. The 3rd, who is mine, used to be an indoor-outdoor cat until she lost an eye to a raccoon. She still likes to go outside sometimes, but we put her on a leash or carry her; no more unsupervised excursions (especially with only one eye).


I'm wearing a backpack because I don't live with them anymore. I do visit several times a year. The flight is only 2 1/2 hours long.


Not pictured is my father's orchard of ~40 fruit trees (it's "behind" the vantage point of this picture), which is quite a feat for Los Angeles.



@nkkl

323.205.6533


See More from Jon Bell






This has been fun. Please invite me to future experiments along these lines. You can find me on Twitter or go straight to my personal website.




Welcome to day twenty-five!


I’m considering turning this project into a book. Each person will be anonymous and have their own chapter listing their responses in order from day one until the project runs its course.


Are you ok with your content being written in a book anonymously?


Sure. Go for it. 


Sure! :)




Welcome to day twenty-six!


1) Write a letter to your fellow contestants of The Long Talk.

2) Write an explanation of The Long Talk to someone who's never heard

of it. Not just the rules but anything you've learned, discovered,

etc.



1)

Hi!

Greetings to a member of anonymous Long Talk club from another member! If we are still here, there should be something that unites us. What could it be? Stubbornness? Love for lonely introverted games? Curiousness for the next day? And wish to know how all this will turn out? Anyway, I'd love to celebrate everything we share, have a beer one great day or do some other project together.


2) Longtalk is a special mailing game. Every day participants get a new task to accomplish -- write a story, send a picture, answer a question. Those who don't make it within a day, get off the game. No one knows what award awaits the winner.


The rules may seem simple, but the game has its balance which makes it fun to play. On one hand, it's great to get new tasks -- each of them is a surprise, and makes players to do unusual things and discover more about themselves. On the other hand, the fear of getting off the game teaches players discipline and persistence. They could be tired and have a tight schedule, they could travel or be ill -- regardless of any troubles players have to find time for the todays' task. Surprisingly, it is doable most of the times. For example, I'm doing my current task sitting in a car somewhere in a desert in Arizona :) 


Longtalk does not require much time, but brings a new dimension in the everyday life, along with many discoveries about yourself. Definitely worth trying! :)


1) 

Hey guys, do you also get the feeling that this is too much of a writing assignment some days? ;) 

Where are you from? Why are you still answering? 


2)

I heard about someone making an experiment (a newsletter that you'd only get if you answer to it everyday). It is fun. No, sorry, you can't get in. Yes, I suppose it's one of those things I do because I'm cooler.




Welcome to day twenty-seven! Here are your fellow Long Talkers:


1)

Hey guys, do you also get the feeling that this is too much of a

writing assignment some days? ;)  Where are you from? Why are you

still answering?


2)

Hi!

Greetings to a member of anonymous Long Talk club from another member!

If we are still here, there should be something that unites us. What

could it be? Stubbornness? Love for lonely introverted games?

Curiousness for the next day? And wish to know how all this will turn

out? Anyway, I'd love to celebrate everything we share, have a beer

one great day or do some other project together.


3)

Hey y'all. Was anyone else a little jarred by being referred to as

"contestants"? I mean I guess I was always aware in the back of my

mind that this was a "last man standing" kind of thing. But as we've

narrowed down to a small set of folks and shared our writing with each

other and had conversations with Jon, it's felt much more

collaborative than competitive. I'm hoping Jon will share these

letters with the group, as he did with the short stories. Really the

only thing I want to say to y'all is "thank you." Thank you for

continuing to write back so this experiment could go on. It's made my

life better, even if only in small ways. So thank you all for that,

and thanks to Jon as well.


4)

I will defeat you eventually. Happy to meet you!


5)

(attached letter)


//


Starting today we're going to do an email game together, improv-style.

Each of you is going to explain your character (physical appearance as

well as motivations), the environment the story begins in, and what

the character does first. Feel free to add challenges of any kind,

dialog, backstory, or anything else that comes to mind.


I'm going to take the five responses and fashion a story out of it for

a while. Sometimes people's responses are going to conflict so I'll

pick one. Have fun!



His name is Joseph, but everybody calls him just Uncle Zeff. He's a lizard from planet Sphyrentix located somewhere in the Orion. Human-sized, with two arms and two legs, he looks almost as a man in his 40s; but his greenish skin and a croc-looking face definitely expose his extra-terrestrial origin. He can talk with a squeaky voice through his special translating device. He is kind and curious, willing to learn more about Earth, but also has some ice in his nature. He has a special sense of humor which doesn't always result in funny jokes. He usually wears a woolen coat and occasionally a red checkered scarf, looking really cute with his green face. Everybody loves him but he is no one's friend.



"I'm going to take the five responses" <-- feeling confident, huh?


Peter is an exchange student, he's 16 and has just arrived in France. This has been a mixup, he was supposed to end up in Italy, he does speak some Italian, but no English at all. Peter is tall in the way only teenagers are: untidy, limbs are always where they shouldn't be, his legs are too long, etc. He is a sports enthusiast, and is fit. He mainly plays basketball. There are no basketball courts in sight in his new neighbourhood.


Upon arriving to the airport, he got picked up by his exchange family and drove home, a medium sized town (around 40K inhabitants) in the suburbs of Lyon. His exchange father was chatting him up all the way, in French. He feels so disoriented and a little bit scared. This does not get better when he discovers (among the friendly smiles of all his exchange family) that dinner for today is escaragots (snails) with butter and garlic.


//


Oh, my bad. Peter is an American. Let's say he's from NYC.






Welcome to day twenty-eight!


Everyone responded with characters and scenes, and I molded them into a story. You should be able to spot your character below. Please continue the story through the eyes of your character, but don't be shy. Feel free to write actual dialog with your character and someone else's. I'd rather have everyone controlling everyone's character than everyone keeping to themselves, because it's much easier to trim and revise than invent from whole cloth :)


///////


Our story takes place in present-day Paris. It's been a hot summer so far. They say it'll get even hotter, but not this week. It's been pretty soggy for several days, which has been a relief to many gardeners throughout the city and the plants in the dry, cracked ground.


Peter is an exchange student from New York City. He had planned to travel to Italy, but there was a mix-up and he ended up in France instead. And not Paris, either. He's been living in a medium-sized town in the suburbs of Lyon.


The first few weeks were rough but his exchange family has been understanding and kind. They are visiting family in Paris and will be sightseeing for the week.


Joseph looks like a man in his 40s, but is actually an alien visiting from planet Sphyrentix. He can speak human languages through a translating device, but it leaves his voice squeaky.


He is kind, curious, and has a special kind of humor that doesn't always result in laughter. He's been in Paris for a few months and he has decided he likes it more than any other city he's visited.


Fillip, an actual dang vampire, has lived in Paris for about a thousand years. Well, not Paris exactly, but a ways out in the countryside. But he adores visiting Paris, and he tries to visit most evenings. After a pot of strong coffee, he gets ready to take the train into the city. It's about 9:45pm.


Olivia, 17, had a pretty bad week, and now she just wants to get out of the house to get her mind off her boyfriend. During the school year he was so sweet, but once the summer hit he turned into a total jerk.


She's gone to the cafe around the corner, alone and with no phone, to read a book. She likes the old-world feeling of being away from everyone, no way to be reached, reading a book with actual pages.


Right now she's almost done reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. In it, a character hides in the bottom of a well when it's time to think. She likes the creepiness and isolation of it. She wants some of that.


Until she spots a boy in the corner. A man, actually. Maybe 25? Tall, skinny, blonde hair, like hers. He looks good, but more than that, she likes how he feels. How he sits there. She eyes him carefully, sees him reading something while sipping on a tea.


...a door opens, and a man enters, moving a bit awkwardly. He makes

several steps towards the boy with a book, and a somewhat mechanical

voice disturbs the usual murmur of evening Parisienne cafe.


- Pete! Assuming the probability of meeting you here is close to zero

this day, I am really lucky to meet you here.


- A-ah, Zeff! Glad to see you! - Peter closed his book. - How is your

work going?


- Currently I am studying mating habits of humans. And this is really hard.


- Really? - Pete gives one of his shiny smiles that makes Olivia loose

her breathe for a moment.


- Definitely. All species in the Universe use every chance they have

to make children. But humans display really controversial behavior.

They seem to want children, but at the same time not to want them.

This makes the process of mating extremely difficult.


- It could be... Yes, surely it can be complicated.. But... What do

you mean exactly?


- Let me pick an example for you, my young friend. I have noticed a

girl at that table, who is definitely interested in you, Pete. But for

some strange reason she just sits there and does not do anything. What

is more, I can predict that if you will call here now, she will try to

deny any affection towards you. But why?


Pete, very much intrigued, looked at the Olivia's corner, noticing her

pretty eyes and making her heart skip a couple of beats. -

Mademoiselle, would you let me offer you something to drink? - he

says, openly looking at her.


Joseph stood still, his back visibly turning into one large ear.


Olivia blushed and stared at her book, lacking courage to move her

sight higher that a page corner, her soul freezing in sweet fear.


-- See what I mean? -- Joseph tried to be polite, but his whisper was

loud enough for the whole cafe to hear.


"No time, no time!" Joseph was running up and down his street while glancing at his watch.





Welcome to day twenty-nine, you stubborn people!


Today read and continue the story. You can control all characters, but please write either from the point of view of Pete or Olivia. Today I’m looking for 500 words to continue. I’ll pick the best pieces and share the continuation of the story tomorrow.


///////


...a door opens, and a man enters, moving a bit awkwardly. He makes several steps towards the boy with a book, and a somewhat mechanical voice disturbs the usual murmur of a Parisienne cafe in the evening.


"Christian! Assuming the probability of meeting you here is close to zero day, I am really lucky to meet you here."


"A-ah, Joseph! Glad to see you!" Christianr closed his book. "How is your work going?"


Joseph shrugged. "Currently I am studying mating habits of humans. And it is really hard."


"Oh?" Christian gives one of his shiny smiles. From across the cafe, Olivia notices. "He's got a great smile," she thinks. "Of course he does."


"Definitely. All species in the Universe use every chance they have to make offspring. But humans display really odd behavior.They seem to want children, but at the same time not to want them. This makes the process of mating extremely difficult."


Christian stroked his chin in the universal (and Joseph would know!) gesture of consideration. "It could be... Yes, surely it can be complicated.. But... What do you mean exactly?"


"Let me pick an example for you, my young friend. I have noticed agirl at that table, who is definitely interested in you, Christian. But forsome strange reason she just sits there and does not do anything. What's more, I can predict that if you will call here now, she will try to deny any affection towards you. But why?"


Christian, very much intrigued, looked towards Olivia's corner, noticing her pretty green eyes and making her heart skip a couple of beats. He smiles and raises his teacup towards her.


She blushes and buries her face in her book again, but he waits patiently for her to look up. She catches his eye and holds it this time. She starts to open her mouth to say something, but the man he's with continues talking, cutting her off. Her mouth is left hanging for a moment, then she closes it quickly and frowns.


"See what I mean?" Joseph says in a stage whisper, loud enough for the whole cafe to hear.


--


Fillip, the actual dang vampire, could feel the eyes on him from the other side of the cafe as he sipped a middling burgundy. It was early, he thought, but maybe he could get started early, home to bed early, maybe have some time to catch up on some reading. He set down his glass and slowly turned his head to meet the gaze that still rested on him.


He would do, he thought, as he walked towards a young boy in the corner fiddling with some sort of handheld computer. He opened with a grin, a point, and a "What's that?". Lame, lame, lame. He was out of practice. Men were harder than women, but the pickings were slim tonight.


"Wha? Oh, this?" Pete replied. "This is an iPad. I'm just- wait, why are you dressed like a vampire?"


Ok, finally I failed. I had a too hard day and just switched off at

the evening. Poor alien Joseph, what will you all do to him? Still I

don't know how to continue the story.


Sometimes I think this is the main difference between an artist and a

designer. The artist always has something to say, and if you give him

a blank canvas he will start expressing himself. Designer does not

have a lot to say, but he loves to solve problems. So if you give him

a problem, his brain will start searching for a solution at the same

moment. But if you give him a white canvas... he will be puzzled, and

would not know what to do. Well, may be some designers would know, but

definitely not me :)


Aw, sorry to hear that. Congratulations on making it so far! :)


Thank you, Jon!

It was a new and perspective-changing experience for me.

Hope you'll publish the final story :)






Welcome to day thirty!


Today I’m copy/pasting two sections of the story submitted by your fellow Long Talkers. Apologies if you don’t see your writing here, I could only pick two :)


Please read the two storylines. You’ll see that the Olivia/Christian story resolves nicely, whereas the Pete/Fillip story continues.


Today your assignment is to continue it further from either Pete or Fillip’s point of view. The assignment is 750 words and a satisfying resolution. If it’s not at least 750 words, you’re out of the running.


///


Olivia shut her book and rushed out of the cafe, ears burning. It was bad enough that her boyfriend no longer seemed to listen to anything she said. And now this beautiful stranger and his friend had made a fool of her, after only a few minutes of eye contact.


She slumped against a nearby wall. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she do anything right?


"Are you all right, miss?"


She looked up and met his eyes. Her heart stuttered, and she couldn't quite remember why she had been so angry at this man.


"Listen, my friend, he didn't mean anything by it... he's, well, he's a bit different. It's nothing about you in particular. You seem like a very nice young woman..."


He trailed off uncomfortably, shoulders slumped. Olivia realized her mouth was half-open, and she shut it self consciously, trying to think of what to say.


"I... well, let's try this again? I-I'm Christian."


He held out one hand. She blinked and grasped it.


"I'm Olivia."


"I, uh, saw that you left your drink. Maybe I can buy you another? At a different cafe, I think, Joseph is still talking to some poor sap about courtship rituals and religion..."


"Th-that would be nice," she sputtered. "Thank you."


--


He led her a few blocks to a quiet side street and opened a weather door. She glanced around uncomfortably before following him. Was this how people got kidnapped and sold into slavery rings? At any rate, it was too late for her now.


The room she stepped into was warm and cozy. Yellowed photographs and posters covered the walls, and cozy chairs bumped up against weathered tables. A rosy-cheeked woman stood behind the counter wiping a pitcher. Save for her, the room was empty.


"Christian! It's been so long! And you have a new friend, is she working with you now?"


"Oh, no, nothing like that. She's just a friend in need of a quiet spot, I think. Olivia, this is Claudia."


"Pleased to meet you dear. Take your time with the menu - I'll make Christian's drink first. He always has the same thing anyway, not like that boyfriend of his who can't make up his mind. Really, something different every time he comes in, some people cannot commit to anything."


Christian flushed. Olivia couldn't help noticing how well his rosy cheeks offset his fair hair. But, a boyfriend! And she had one of those as well. Desperate to clear her head, she buried herself in the menu.


"I suppose it's as good a time as any to mention that we broke up..."


"Just as well, dear, he wasn't good enough for you anyway. Really now, an ad man? For my Christian? You need to find someone who cares as much about the world as you do."


Christian coughed uncomfortably and mumbled something unintelligible. Sympathizing with his discomfort, Olivia cleared her throat and held up the menu. She pointed to one of the beverages (she wasn't sure what half the words in the description meant) and said "Can I try this?"


"Of course dear, I'll be just a minute. You two find a table and I'll bring everything over."


--


The drink was delicious, warm and delicate. Olivia couldn't quite identify the flavors, but they flowed together perfectly. She sipped delicately, and turned to Christian.


"So, what do you do? Why did she think I worked with you?"


He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow. He looked so serious, and Olivia imagined photographing him like this.


"I work at a nonprofit. We are still quite small, so I do a lot of things, but mostly fundraising and communications. Sometimes we have interns - Claudia probably assumed you were one of them. I bring them here sometimes when they need a break - it's good to have a place where you don't think about work so much."


"And what do you do outside of work? You seem like someone who would have interesting hobbies. I mean..."


Olivia cut herself off. Stupid, she thought. Always putting your foot in your mouth. An unreadable look flashed across Christian's face, and he composed himself so quickly she wasn't sure it had happened at all. But she was sure that just for a moment he had looked as though there was something he wanted to say.


"Honestly? I spend most of my time working... There is so much to do, and we are not doing so well financially right now, so more falls on me. But I shouldn't bother you with my problems - I hardly know a thing about you."


Sensing a plea in his tone, she told him about her school, and summer break. He frowned when Olivia described how distant her boyfriend had become, his face darkening when she mentioned the "jokes" he had played on her the first month of break. She told him about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and how it inspired her to go to the cafe alone to think. She talked about her parents, and her hopes for university, and how she had no idea what to specialize in. By the time her drink was dry she felt like she'd told him everything there was to know about herself. She stretched slowly, and Christian stood up and carried their mugs to the counter before opening the door.


"It's getting late, and I don't want your parents to worry. But I enjoyed meeting you, and I only regret that it came about in such an uncomfortable way. If you want... well, if you are interested, I'd be happy to have you come help us out. I can't really afford to pay you, but I think you might find it interesting and I think we could find some other way to make it worth your time. Here, uh, you can always come by."


He handed her a slightly frayed business card and hugged her briefly before disappearing into the night.


Storyline two:


"Wha? Oh, this?" Pete replied. "This is an iPad. I'm just- wait, why are you dressed like a vampire?"


"A what," Filip, the actual dang vampire, asked quite disengenuously.


"You're wearing a long black cape with a satin red lining,  you have two long canine incisors, you have a widows peak that reaches practically to the bridge of your nose, your skin is pale, and your novelty tshirt says "FUCK GARLIC" so basically you couldn't be dressed more like a vampire if you tried."


"Canine incisors," sputtered Fillip, an actual dang vampire, "I don't even know what that means!"


"Sorry," Pete began to explain, "I spent some time in dental school awhile ago. But basically you are a walking  vampire cosplayer."


"Cosplayer?" sputtered Fillip, an actual dang vampire.


"Nevermind." said Pete, pretty sure he was dealing with an actual vampire, but also pretty sure it was a wildly incompetent one.


"So do you want to get a bite to eat," he asked, "maybe something Italian?"


He was so sure of his own cleverness in inviting a vampire to a garlic laced dinner that he never stopped to consider the possibility that the whole garlic thing was an old wives tale. A totally inaccurate account of Vampire biology that most vampires - those aware of the tale anyway- found vaguely insulting. I mean, for an immortal being that feeds on the life force of humans, it was pretty silly to think a root vegetable, however pungent, would somehow be the magic bullet to end immortality.


Though stranger things, of course, did occur in nature. The mighty slug, capable of ruining acres worth of garden, could *actually* be destroyed with a little table salt. Bad luck for the slug, or bad natural selection, or something. 


Anyway, Pete was hardly thrown off when Fillip, an actual dang vampire, agreed to grabbing dinner at La Bella Lugosi down the street.


They ntered the restaraunt to the strains of Pavarotti being pushed through the two tinny speakers mounted over the door of the restaurant. A waiter with noticeably long canine incisors approachd the table to take their order.


"To start, let;s have the roasted garlic and the green garlic marinated gnudi, how does that sound, Fillip?"


Fillip, an actual dang vampire, nodded his head gently in assent. He wasa a sucker for a good gnudi.


"Do you like opera?" Pete asked.


"I have," said Fillip, an actual dang vampire. 


"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?" Pete asked, a little more directly this time.


Fillip hissed gently, inaudibly to normal humas, and asked "what"?


Before Fillip could do much else, the first course arrived,






Welcome to day thirty-one!


Conclusion #1

Before Fillip could do much else, the first course arrived.

As the actual dang vampire tucked into the gnudi, Pete thought "Shoot, maybe that's not an actual dang vampire."

So now Pete found himself at a restaurant with a complete stranger who he had just accused of being an undead immortal but with whom he otherwise had nothing in common. The situation was awkward, but the gnudi were delightful. 

"So what do you do for a living," asked Pete.

Filip, the actual dang vampire, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, smiled, and lied. "I am a website administrator for an international e-commerce site. It's very boring, I don't like to talk about work."

"Oh thats cool, so you're like a programmer?"

"Yes, what about you?

"Well I'm an exchange student. I was supposed to be in Italy for the semester, but there was a mixup, and here I am.  I was supposed to to Italy because I'm studying protein and gluten development in pasta recipes from the mid-Renaissance period and its effect on the weight of average European males between twenty and thirty-two.  Obviously that can't really happen here, so I've modified my studies to explain the correlation between the rise of cream based sauces and the oppression of ethnic minorities living within the Paris city limits.  That too is complicated by the fact that I live in Lyon so I've also began a side study on the effect of the silk market in the architecture of bridge designs, particularly those bridge designs created or influenced by mid Roman imperial military architecture and planning.

It is hard to be out here and be an American. Did you know I was an American?

America gained independence from Britain in the late 1700′s after the Revolutionary War. Britain was hoping to extend its empire across the Atlantic Ocean, but the colonists who settled the territory did not want to be under Britain’s control, with their various taxes and regulations. Both sides were very passionate about their position on the issue, so a war occurred. This war featured a few heroes, including George Washington and Paul Revere. George Washington became America’s first president when we gained independence. I am not sure what happened to Paul Revere. The Declaration of Independence was written before the war by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 and made clear the position of the colonists. It was signed by many important people, including Ben Franklin and John Hancock. Ben Franklin is well-known for many things. One of these is inventing electrical conductors in the form of lightning rods. A famous tale is that he flew a kite with a small piece of metal somewhere on the string during a lightning storm. This was an effective way to test his theory. Another thing Ben Franklin is known for is publishing Poor Richards Almanac. This was like a magazine and contained some of his famous writings and quotations. One famous quote was “Tell me, I forget. Teach me, I remember. Involve me, I learn.” Maybe this had something to do with why he flew that kite.

Anyway, back to my original study, the one about pasta?  It's fascinating stuff. Gliadin and glutenin are commonly considered the 'star' proteins of pasta, at least as regards its features that consumers most highly appreciate (cooking capacity, elasticity, 'al dente' chewability). Actually their role in these characteristics is decisive, but it is also necessary to add that they do not have an exclusive merit in this and that, additionally, they also perform other technologically fundamental functions, among which water absorption is very important.

When water is added to the semolina (or to the flour) and the dough is mixed mechanically, glutenin and gliadin form gluten, a protein compound that, as every pasta maker in the world knows (or should know…), forms a kind of mesh in the structure of the dough, trapping the starch grains and basically preventing the pasta during cooking from turning into polenta. Actually this gross simplification does injustice to the professionalism of the pasta maker, who needs to know many other things. For example, the mechanism of gluten formation and its way of behaving with water is fundamental knowledge also to be able to dr-"

Filip, an actual dang vampire, leapt across the table and tore into Peter's throat, bored out of his fucking mind. The other vampires sitting nearby politely applauded then joined in the feast, commenting how the gentle garlic flavor from the gnudi complimented the taste of blood quite nicely.

Conclusion #2


“Your food, gentlemen. Let me know if you need anything else.”

With a curt nod, the waiter swept away.

“So,” Pete continued, “You haven’t answered my question.”

Fillip’s mind raced as he tried to figure out this strange human’s game. He hadn’t pegged Pete as being particularly religious. On the other hand, who invited strangers out to dinner on such short notice?

“I’ll admit, I’m a bit up in the air on that one.”

“How, exactly, is one up in the air on whether or not they’ve accepted Jesus Christ as one’s personal lord and savior? Also, do you want the last piece of bread?”

Fillip stuffed the bread in his mouth to buy some time. This human was starting to be more trouble than he was worth. Chewing slowly, he mulled his options over and decided that it had to be a test of some sort. Unfortunately, he couldn’t figure out a satisfactory rebuttal beyond “vampires don’t really go in for religion”. Frustrated and slightly flustered, Fillip grabbed the wine menu. Maybe if he got the human drunk, these questions would stop.

“Do you want some wine? We can pretend it’s the blood of Christ, if that’s your thing…”

Pete smirked and took the wine menu from Fillip.

“I have to admit, I don’t know much about wine. What do you recommend?”

“Perhaps this one, or this. They’re both excellent.” Fillip made eye contact with the waiter, who glided over quietly. He inclined his head towards his guest. Pete hurriedly chose a wine that was nothing like the two Fillip had suggested to him. Fillip fought the urge to roll his eyes.

He was an actual dang vampire. A pesky human was no match for him. Why couldn’t they just see that and start from there? None of this trickery and subterfuge, just raw power.

He startled from his reverie as Pete scooted his chair out with a squeal and stood up.

“Sorry, just going to the restroom. I’ll be back in a flash.”

Fillip blinked and nodded. Humans.

The waiter returned with a bottle of wine and shifted surreptitiously until Fillip met his eye.

“Normally I would let your friend do the honors, but I suspect that you know more.” The waiter flashed a tight smile that did not reach his eyes.

“I’m sure that it’s perfectly fine. Just pour him a glass and he won’t notice the difference anyway.”

“You are sure about this? If you would like to taste it in his absence...”

“Yes, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter anyway.” Fillip was starting to get annoyed with this waiter. “And what does it matter to you, anyway?”

“Well,” the waiter intoned, “I prefer my meals not to be over-spiced.”

Fillip narrowed his eyes. First the human who wouldn’t shut up, and now this lowlife trying to edge in and steal away the products of his hard work? Unacceptable.

“And I prefer my meals unshared. Excepting very special circumstances.” Fillip clenched his jaw and held the waiter’s eye. His adversary grinned widely, exposing a gleaming smile, and leaned forward slightly.

“You do not look as though you are about to have any meal. Why don’t you call it for what it is and give up? Maybe you can find an old woman in the park.”

In a flash Fillip was on his feet.

“At least I don’t waste my time waiting tables. Who do you think you are?”

“Your better. If you think what I do is a waste, it only shows how foolish you are.”

Fillip felt his temper sizzling, and his fists clenched involuntarily. He took a menacing step towards the waiter and glared.

“I’ll only warn you one more time: back off.”

“I think not.” He lashed out, whipping the wine bottle towards Fillip’s ear with blinding speed. Fillip ducked the blow and grabbed a knife, leaping towards his opponent. The waiter grabbed his wrist as he slashed and pulled him forward. Both vampires tumbled to the ground and rolled, struggling to gain the advantage. Diners screamed and scrambled away as slid across the floor.

Fillip disentangled himself and kicked the waiter away with both legs. He took the opportunity to get back on his feet and regain his balance. His opponent did the same, and they crouched opposite one another, arms flexed and teeth bared. With a roar, both vampires rushed at forward and crashed together. Locked arm in arm, they slammed into the wall. The chandelier above them rocked and then snapped off its chain, crashing downwards. 

The combatants looked upward with matching stupefied expressions as the chandelier smashed into them. Both crumpled, unconscious, into a tangle of limbs and broken chair.

“Sorry, I couldn’t find any paper tow-“ Pete trailed off. He surveyed the wreckage of the now empty dining room, resting his eyes on the fallen vampires. He shrugged, grabbed a slice of bread of a nearby table, tucked his iPad under his arm, and left the restaurant whistling. Vampires indeed.

Conclusion #3


…and it was _delicious_. Oh my god, this was the best garlic that Fillip had ever had in his _life._ All the other times he’s had garlic he got food poisoning, but here we are.


But then again, that was bound to happen at [The Stinking Rose](http://thestinkingrose.com/about-sf.htm), where they serve over a metric ton of garlic every month to vampires like Fillip – the legions of the damned who secretly love eating garlic, even though it kind of goes against the whole point of being a vampire.


It’s not that garlic kills vampires, it’s that it’s a bad look for vampires to eat garlic. There’s an image problem at play here. There’s the prevailing expectation that you use garlic to ward vampires off, and of course they play the part, because otherwise you would be _disappointed._ How often do you even encounter a vampire, anyway? Obviously they need to have fangs, a cape, and they need to hate garlic and stakes in the heart.


So, where did this garlic-related folderol come from, you may ask? Well, that all dates back to 1352, when a curious fellow by the name of Mortimer was cultivating garlic in his farm. Bulbs and bulbs of the stuff for miles on end. It was a good life – as good as you could hope to have in the middle of the Black Death, anyway – and business – as much as you could have _business_ back then – was booming. 


Mortimer would often sell his whole crop before it even came due to harvest. He’d dig garlic out of the ground and throw each bulb, leaves and all, into the wheelbarrow, and then his kids would haul the garlic into town. Rinse and repeat until the end of the season.


This went on, year after year. Mortimer was nearing retirement, after thirty years of harvesting garlic and making a gazillion dollars by 14th-century standards. He’d secured his future and his kids’ future, just by planting and digging the hottest trend-vegetable of the century.


But then something happened to the crop. One day, Mortimer dug out a bulb, and it came out _black._ What? He wrote it off as a loss – bad stuff happens to crops, and you can’t harvest _everything_. But another bulb: black. And another. And another.


Turns out the whole field was black. Was the crop safe to eat? Mortimer had no idea. But he also had customers to please, and he had to think fast – his son was waiting with the wheelbarrow, right over there.


So Mortimer made a decision. The garlic would be _special_. Black garlic doesn’t come every day, you know! And he could sell it for a premium.


Mortimer felt very pleased about this decision. Marketing, you know? Mortimer runs a business. He sometimes has to act on his feet. No clue if the next garlic he digs up will be, like, plaid or something. That’s just a varietal, right? And then the whole town died, and Mortimer went out of business.


Turns out that Mortimer’s lethal garlic wasn’t just bad for humans, though: it also killed vampires. And, as Wikipedia has told us all, garlic-fearing vampires were the chief cause of the Black Death for most of the time it ravaged Europe.


But it wasn’t _all_ garlic that was killing off the vampires. It was Mortimer’s crappy _black_ garlic. And to this day, there’s no accounting for black garlic’s existence. When you dig up a bulb of black garlic, you’re now instructed to kill it with lots and lots of fire. Did you know that napalm is half grated castile soap and half gasoline? Super easy to mix in a bathtub – just don’t put it in a plastic container.


Anyway, Mortimer has been dead for over six centuries, so let’s go back to Fillip. While I’ve been talking for the past ten minutes, Fillip finished off his whole thirteen-course, garlic-centric meal, including garlic ice cream and a platter of garlic-laced cheeses. Fillip and Pete had the worst breath of all time.


“Well, shall we?” Fillip asked.


“You can _move?_”, inquired Pete.


“I have a really good metabolism.”


“I bet you didn’t digest that. I bet you’re a vampire.”


“Well, I am, but you’re pretty great. It’s been good having this chat with you.”


“What are you going to do now?”


“Oh, I don’t know… stalk someone, hit a 4am bar, drink some blood, go to sleep. You?”


“Going _straight to bed._ It’s so late! We’re closing out the place!”


“Yeah, I was never much of a morning person.”


“…That makes sense,” Pete said after a pause.


“Anyway, shall we?”


And they walked out into the night, which was not at all foreboding and really sort of convivial in the part of town they ended up in.


Today


Write one line about ten people that you see today. I’ve done this before in cafes, and it’s pretty fun, actually:


Man deep in thought at his laptop, bright blue shirt with parrot on it.

Woman with pink hair, boots, and long skirt strides by confidently.

Sad eyes and a big smile; older, weathered, stands proudly.




Welcome to day thirty-two! Here are 30 brief character studies:

1 Quiet, focused, and determined; the loudest thing about him is his shoes.

2 Bangs, cap sleeves, walking her dog.

3 Walking around, babbling, great importance, 18 months old. 

4 Angry person driving a car and honking at me.

5 She's both taller and friendlier than average.

6 He's the kind of person who starts walking before the walk signal lights up.

7 Nice guy sits in the backseat of a car, looking self-conscious.

8 Tights, a long-sleeved dress, and a headscarf seems very uncomfortable for July but she doesn't look bothered.

9 The guy from UP has grown a little taller and now wears expensive Italian loafers. 

10 Was that Ron pearlman on the huffy in the intersection, or just a homeless guy who looked like him?

11 Blonde lady, black helmet, Mercier bike, stopped to let me cross at the intersection.

12 Shaking from an unknown illness and hiding it. 

13 She's dressed for summer and texting her friends.

14 Red t-shirt, won’t stop yelling about her achievements in Microsoft Excel.

15 The girl wears tie dye and isn't sure how old she is at any given moment. 

16 Your shirt is too nice and too tight for the dmv. 

17 Hispanic, middle-aged man, carrying two crates down the street.

18 Her bright blue and green kit doesn't really go with her white and black bike, but at least her bike shoes match it. 

19 Tan t-shirt, khakis, back turned, grouting a brick wall.

20 Reflecting the hot white sun from his topsiders to his teeth. 

21 Blonde streak, Surly bike, didn’t notice me at first.

22 He has a green shirt, a ponytail, a tray of tapas dishes, and a cool accent.

23 Gray slayer shirt, widow’s peak, carrying a garden hose.

24 Pregnant. Grumpy. Usually. 

25 1’ beard, giving a bear hug to his friend.

26 Clone of @aworkinglibrary with blue hair, hammering away on a laptop.

27 An Abercrombie model, turned to alcoholism, sitting on a couch, bloated in his salmon shorts. 

28 A man in a checked shirt and jeans sits alone, eating chips and fiddling with his laptop.

29 Sitting, sullen, fat, "NEXT!"

30 With a pink shirt, shorts, and sunglasses, he's all set for the weekend.


I’ve been doing this for months. I just started “One Line People” using some of these submissions to start: https://twitter.com/onelinepeople


If you tweet about it, please keep it anonymous.


Today:


Draw me a picture of your family the way a kindergartener would. I’m not looking for drawing ability, I’m looking for meaning in a doodle. Feel free to provide a text explanation too.


When I was young, I was assigned this task, but they said “draw your parents”. I drew my mom, my dad, and my brother. The teacher told me I didn’t follow directions, and I said “my brother is my parent”. She corrected me. I corrected her.


The thing is, in my family my brother is 11 years older than me. He was absolutely my third parent. It wasn’t that I misunderstood the assignment, or was trying to make a statement. My brother was the third parent. Period.





Welcome to day thirty-three!


Write a letter to someone born in 2007, making them seven now. Give them general life advice that they will be allowed to read at these checkpoints:


Last day of elementary school

Last day of junior high

Last day of high school

Last day of college

Last day of post-grad

The day they’re married




maybe a new job

temperature way too high

three plus one. all girls?


1. packing my house to move

2. improving my marriage

3. p90x3


1)

35

2)

same

3)

I don't know. I was looking forward to always being surprised by you.


State workers have it easy.


What's your "only where you live" unidentifiable fact?


I was 17 and told my folks I was going to my buddy's lake house, but instead went to another friend's house and dropped a lot of acid. No one else partook, but they enjoyed fucking with me. Trip went bad, about 4 AM I called home and asked to be picked up. My dad said "I thought you were out at the lake". Somehow I conveyed that I was actually at Logan's house only five minutes away. He came, picked me up, didnt say anything, I flopped face down on my bed, still tripping hard. An hour later he came in and said "Cmon, get up, its Sunday, time to go to church."


I was sitting down in the living room when all my siblings walked in.


"I thought you were out at the lake," my sister said, "how are you back here?"


My dad stuck his head in to the room


"Magic." He said.


And that was it.


///


also lol. "write me a story" I predict results in a 35% dropout.



Cool question.


My dad has a PhD in molecular biology and works in research for an international pharmaceutical company. So he believes in intellectual rigor, evidence based decision making, and that the world is an amazing place. He is also an ardent Roman Catholic in a field that probably has more atheists per capita than any other. He takes a similar approach to his faith as to his science. He is incredibly well read in theology and church history.


My dad shares your dad's belief about people who insist on their degree-based titles.


He also believes in the value of hard work and "if somethings worth doing, its worth doing well", that kind of thing.



How are you at a party? What role to do you play?


Quiet. Prefer to get engaged in an interesting conversation w a couple

people than wander around. Definitely introverted tendencies. I will

also remain close to the bar and use it's services often.

Who are you to your friends?

The guy you call for advice when life gets complicated. Reliable.

Calm. Listens.



How does your family see you?


The lovable black sheep. Impulsive. Oldest son w bad habits but

somehow found success and built a family of his own. The lawyer.




I like it when men smell like old spice

I like it when women smell like cigarettes and perfume

I like it when city planners make bike paths

I like it when tourists are quiet

When I'm traveling, I like cities that have great food

I like when kids are quiet

I like it when adults are thoughtful

I like it when the elderly tell stories

I like it when friends bring drinks

I like when the weather is breezy and 70

I like when designers delight me

I like when co-workers become friends


While you're thinking through these, you're probably thinking of

people in your life that do these things. So there's one last

question.


I told my wife that I liked how she looked in those shorts.


You can make someone's entire day with a sincere thank you or

compliment. Share one and let me know how it goes.


Kind of a stretch of the assignment. I wrote this for a law school class called Law in the American West where we read novels by and about native americans and focused heavily on the question of white people writing the NA perspective. The final writing project was pretty open ended, though most seemed to write a book report on one of the novels. I read a bunch about the Chumash and turned in this.


Got an A. Not to brag.



////





Humqaq


by Rich Marotti

for Legal Themes in the Early American West







































There haven’t been any Chumash Indians. . .for most of this century and the Chumash culture was largely extinct prior to 1850. The absurd hypocrisy which has been spawned by Santa Barbara’s “contemporary Indian” activists leaves me in a perpetual state of disbelief.

Dr. David M. Van Horn

Santa Barbara News Press March 29, 1987



“We know what it is, but we can’t tell you because you either won’t believe us or you’ll dig it up to prove us wrong.”

Sky Eagle, Chumash elder, 

Santa Barbara News Press July 3, 1980
































Heavy and dry, the Santa Ana winds blew down through the valley where the Owl clan was camped for the fall.  Eagle had rested his wings in Shimilaqsha this year and so Sun baked the winds, keeping the clan warm at night.  It was a blessing. During the day all of the game rested lazily in shaded dells, making them easier to spear.  The children enjoyed playing in the Mupu pools, though they were lower than usual.

Relishing the warmth and full bellies, three men of the clan sat naked on a small hill above the encampment. A few fires smoldered outside of the 'aps but most of the people were asleep.  They lazily tossed painted walnuts, but the stakes were low and they were all tired. Suddenly Mountain Lion leapt to his feet and began to clap wildly. 

"Away! East!" 

The two men turned and saw the spirit drifting lazily through the live oaks and tall grass, headed West, towards Humqaq, the gate to Shimilaqsha.  They too stood and clapped shouting, "East! East!" When the spirit wavered, the men thought they had succeeded had turned the spirit back to its body. But the spirit turned again, heading due west and quickly.  Mountain Lion turned to his companions. 

"We need to wake the 'antap and tell them what we have seen."  Burrow Spider spit and uneasily picked the walnuts off the ground. "I'm going to sleep.  Wake them if you must, but I have nothing to say."

Mountain Lion shrugged; he and Mosquito Hawk bounded down the hill to Qilikutayiwit’s ‘ap.  Mountain Lion ducked into the entrance. “Sister, a spirit has left for Humqaq.”  She started from sleep and had Mountain Lion repeat what he had said.  Standing up, she brushed past him out of the ‘ap and stared up towards Sky Snake, straining as if she could see the one new star amidst the thousands in the bright path.

“Go to sleep.  There is nothing to be done tonight.  Tomorrow the ‘antap will gather at the stone and chant the siliyuk medicine.  You must keep the hunters away from there. Now sleep.” As she turned to go back into her ‘ap the low wail of a woman rose above the camp.  It was a death chant.

****

Boomer stared out the window at the front loader leveling the dirt outside the trailer classroom.  The earthmover stopped moving and several men ran over in front of it.  Any interest Boomer had been feigning in the demonstration of Kepler’s explanation for Mars’ orbit disappeared as he strained to read the lips of the Mexican laborers who were pointing at the ground and yelling at the white foreman.

“Shit,” muttered the foreman as he looked at the lacquered brown skull inconveniently jutting out of the hard clay. He waved the workers away, trying to communicate in near-unintelligible Spanish that they were done for the day.  They piled in to two old Honda Civics and left the site.  He cursed again and noticed that one of the college students heard him.  In her frumpy ankle-length jumper she scowled at him and walked on, cradling her books like an injured kitten.

How, he wondered, had he found himself here, in this bizarre college in the middle of nowhere, with thirty year old trailers for buildings and now, right fucking now when they were already behind, the bones of some dead Neanderthals that would inevitably set him back several more months and lots more money.  He spat and headed to John Hewitt’s office.

“John, there’s a skull on the site, right where we’re grading for the foundation.”

“Like a murder victim?”

“Nah, I’ve seen this shit before, out on a site near Porterville. Probably Indian, maybe even one of your mission priests. We’ll probably start digging up pottery and arrowheads next and then a bunch of hippies will be picketing your driveway.  It’ll turn into a shitshow. They’ll demand a shaman. Burn some leaves.  We’re talking about at least an extra month here; even if we get started again they’ll be some professional Indian watching our every move. Practically going through the dirt with a sieve.”

“Who knows?”

“All the guys saw it, John, but that doesn’t even matter.  This is my license number on the line.  I need to report this shit.”

“Bring the skull here and be your own goddamn shaman. You find more, you bring it to me, and we’ll think about paying you something close to what we agreed on.”

The foreman couldn’t believe it.  He didn’t know much about this bizarre little school, but he knew they were religious.  Hell, the ground he was grading was for a church or something.   He ducked his head out the door; Hewitt’s secretary had gone home for the day.

“You better not screw me on this, John.”

“Bring the skull inside and keep your spics quiet.”

****

“It’s one line,” she said, less dejected than furious.

“These things aren’t a hundred percent you know, we could go see Dr. Tushla. . .”

“Like the last five times, Pat? So he can tell us to keep trying?  Look, I don’t want to be vulgar, but you know how it works at the college, let alone the tax breaks.  Not only do we want to have kids, to be fruitful and multiply, but the kids mean money, Pat.  We don’t need this redneck alcoholic doctor to tell us how to have sex.  We need to start making babies.”

“Annie. . .” he trailed off.  They stared at each other for another moment, and Pat hung his head, retreating to his study.  The test was the test, and he needed to teach Galileo in an hour.  He hadn’t even read the heretic yet.

As he drove up to campus he worried.  Not about his classes, he could teach just fine, or at least pretend.  Annie had never talked like that before.  It didn’t make any sense. Did she really marry a philosophy PhD for the money?  If she was that stupid he had made some serious mistakes much earlier than he cared to consider.  He taught his class on Galileo without incident, mocking the students who lacked basic skills in algebra. Where did the college find these people?

Lunch was, as always, grim.  The college had somehow convinced a donor to provide meat for the cafeteria.  Unfortunately the donor owned an ostrich farm.  As Pat shuffled the grizzly bits of his “sloppy joe” around his plate, Ronald Turquist, seventy-two years old, sat down next to him.  Pat put on his best grin.  The founder of the college was a windbag and an asshole, but he hadn’t secured tenure yet. Time to play nice.

“How are things going with you and Anne in the new house?”

“Oh, everything’s great.  The other professors and their wives have all been very kind, very helpful.  Anne is even doing a little babysitting.”

“Great. Great. So have you knocked one past the goalie yet?”

Pat was glad that the food was too disgusting to eat or else he would’ve choked on it. He was hoping Turquist had confused him for a recreational hockey player.

“I’m sorry?”

“A bun in the oven, Pat!  You guys have been married for what, two years now? No kids?”

“Well, we’re trying.”

“Fair enough. . .interesting. . .why don’t you come see me when you get out of class this afternoon.”

“Um, sure. Your office?”

“No, why don’t you meet me out back of the cafeteria here.  4 o’clock?”

“See you then.”

****

The Yokut man was drunk.  Mountain Lion had seen it when he went to trade with the shell money clans by the water, those who guarded Humqaq. The Owl clan had no interest, and rarely enough goods, to trade for the drinks.  It was too confusing anyway, to accumulate the shells, to know how many was enough for the things that the mission priests offered. Still, the Yokut were close relations to the Owl clan, closer in some ways than the shell money clans. And this one, despite his slurring, seemed to know of siliyuk medicine.  Mountain Lion’s mother had been nothing but a tender of children and a masher of acorns.  Rumors around the camp even said she was a descendant of the Dog Girl. He could never join the ‘antap, and so he was happy to listen to this Yokut ramble.  Anyway, it was his duty to keep everyone away from the rock while Qilikutayiwit performed the Sky Snake medicine, and asked the rock what happened.

“Eight days, I’ve been trying to get here,” the Yokut struggled to say.  “I even met a few of your hunters out in the ravine where the river forms the third pool, but they ignored me. We need. . .well forget that. Do you know what?”

Mountain Lion nodded.

“When Hutash first made us, out on the islands, she was proud of herself.  I guess that’s what gods do. Make things like us.  But it was so nice out there, we fucked liked the hare. Everything. Fantastic.  Our people grew and grew and grew. I imagine Hutash thought it was a fine work she had made, but Swordfish, Woodpecker and Coyote could never get any sleep. They bitched and moaned to Hutash about the racket we made. Why did you make these things? And on and on. Hutash didn’t want any trouble on the islands, so she made a deal with the other gods.  That she would send our people off the islands, to the mainland, if they would teach us things to help us continue to prosper on the mainland.”

Mountain Lion had heard the story countless times, but he let the Yokut continue, hoping for a glimpse into the siliyuk medicine.

“So they did and Hutash built a rainbow bridge over the channel to the mainland.  Our people walked across it, and while not all survived the passage it seemed OK.  I mean, even the ones that fell off became dolphins, or at least that’s what the shell money clans say. That bitch Hutash doomed us right then and there.  We walked across her rainbow bridge smack into the hands of the priests and their guards. Sick and subjected, all thanks to our lovely god.” The Yokut paused, and vomited all over the ground.  It was green and black, Mountain Lion noticed, right before the Yokut collapsed and fell in to it.

****

Hewitt smiled with the satisfaction of a man who knew how to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. He kicked the garbage bag full of bones under his desk and chortled, “Pagans.” The foundation for his chapel was mostly poured and there was nary a protesting hippy in sight.  They had handled the issue with the rock diplomatically enough, and so no one bothered them.  They let the Indians put up their peace pole, and apologized whenever a student, zealous from either whisky or the catechism, tore it down.  Hewitt’s phone rang unexpectedly and he grunted.  

“Yes?” It was his secretary.

“John, someone from the Santa Ynez Reservation is here.”

“Tell them I’m busy.”

“I did, three hours ago.”

“Send them in,” he growled with contented resignation.

“John Hewitt,” he smiled, extending his hand across his desk, “and you are?”

“White Condor, and I’ve come to speak with you about the excavation you’ve been doing,” he said, still standing with his arms crossed behind his back.

“We haven’t been doing any excavation, we’re building a church.”

“The reservation counsel has been informed that you have found the bones of our people.  This area was once a traditional camp for the Owl clan.”

“I don’t know where your counsel received their information, but it is false.  We would of course notify the counsel immediately if we found anything.”

White Condor turned to leave without responding and walked out the door.

Hewitt cried out.  On his desk, a Jerusalem Cricket skittered towards him.  He smashed it with his mug and coffee spilled all over his desk calendar.

“Dammit.”

****

Pat waited outside the cafeteria as the sun drew lower over the mountains surrounding the college. He checked his watch impatiently.  He had a seminar to teach on Herodotus that evening and still hadn’t finished reading.  Turquist came around the corner along with Hewitt and two of the other decrepit founders.

“You have seminar tonight, correct?”

“Yes, Herodotus.”

“Excellent, excellent. Be sure to ask them what history is.”

“Um, OK. Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

“No, no.  The four of us will be back here at nine tonight.  Meet us then.”

Pat nodded and the three men turned and walked back into the cafeteria.

It’s a pretty good question, Pat thought.

****

Burrow Spider stood outside his family’s ‘ap.  Finally, his wife’s death chant had quieted to the point where he no longer grimaced at its shrillness. While, he knew his child was ill, it was a strange illness, and he had trusted that the ‘antap would use the proper medicine.

He didn’t know why. His son, Water Skater, was a curse from the ‘antap in the first place.  Well, the ‘antap and his wife.  Their family was already strong. His two older sons were becoming skilled hunters, and Qilikutayiwit had taken his daughter, Womponamon, under her wing.  She would join the ‘antap in her proper time.  Why then, had his wife insisted on a larger family?  They had struggled to make another child for two cycles of the four colored seasons.  Was that not an answer enough? Hutash had spoken. Listen.  But his wife had insisted, and she gathered the ‘antap late at night, out by the rock.  Two months later, Eagle raised his feathers to block out the moon and Water Skater was formed in his wife’s belly.

Qilikutayiwit approached his ‘ap and ducked inside. His wife was ‘antap and he was not, so he was not permitted to listen to the conversation that took place inside. But could he hear bits and pieces, when their murmurs rose a little too loud. “Sky Snake has taken. . . .even with new pits in the rock. . .a strange. . .”

Burrow Spider was interrupted from his eavesdropping by Mountain Lion, approaching at a quick jog. 

“Is Qili inside,” he asked.

Burrow Spider nodded, and Mountain Lion called out.

“Sister, a Yokut hunter is ill on the outside of camp.  He said that he and their clan are in need of the rock medicine.” Qilikutayiwit stepped out of the ‘ap and frowned.  

“And what is wrong with their rattlesnake medicine?”  She spat into the dust.

“He was not very clear.  He said, well, I thought he said that their rattlesnake men were all lost, that no one was left who knew the siliyuk medicine in their clan. But that cannot happen; how could it happen.”

Qilikutayiwit stared directly at the sun.  The winds had stopped and the air was still and hot. Two women suddenly sprung from the entrance of their ‘aps, calling for Qilikutayiwit. Almost inaudibly, the low moan of Mountain Lion’s wife came from the ground behind their ‘ap. He blanched, and Qilikutayiwit pulled a small medicine basket from out of the purse she wore.  She dropped it into the fire and walked west.

****

Boomer’s night seminar had been cancelled and he had celebrated by getting drunk before dinner, then drinking more for dinner.  He had stumbled back on campus from the river where most of the students drank and was thinking about heading back to his dorm when he found himself in front of the Indian rock.  The students were never told much about it, except it was Indian, and you shouldn’t step over the low wooden fence around it.

Boomer stepped over the fence and unzipped his pants.  He was in mid-piss when he saw 5 men walking towards him, coming out of the cafeteria.  

“Shit.”  He tripped backwards, his pants still unzipped and scrambled into the low bushes on the other side of the road that passed behind the rock.  He recognized Hewitt’s voice from among the five.

“Pat, here, take this stone, and this cup.  Now scrape here, in these little pits in the rock. Scrape the dust into the cup. Now, take this dust home, mix it with some water and,”

A bellow erupted from the bushes, and the men standing around the rock froze.  The screams intensified and were joined by the fierce snarl of a mountain lion. Three mountain lions leapt from out of the brush, as the screaming grew quieter and stopped all together.  One of them leapt at Hewitt, its long fangs locking in to his shoulder. Turning to run the other men looked over their shoulder and saw several more of the cats bounding towards them.  They made it halfway to the cafeteria before they were all knocked to the ground.

****

Mountain Lion sat by the cold remains of a fire outside of his ‘ap.  Stink of rotting flesh and vomit filled the valley of the camp. He wished for the wind to come and blow it away, to warm the shuddering chills racking his naked body, but everything was still. A few weak groans traveled lazily around the camp.  He had seen the spirits one by one head west for Humqaq. For two nights he had watched them go, to weak himself to stand.  His hands were raw from clapping, though even that he had given up on earlier in the evening.  He leaned over and vomited the black bile.  He coughed, and rising to stand, leaning on the wall of his dead family’s ‘ap he told the story of his mother to the quiet camp all around him, chanting in a weak voice.

The dog people lived in the hills, and knew no one else, just the mother and her children. The mother and her children they scavenged, they ate shit, they ate what they could to greet Sun the next morning. The eldest daughter, she walked over the hill to the west and walked further, trying to find a dead crow or condor, anything for her family.  The shell money people saw her, high on the hill and called to her. 

“Come, come we have plenty, you must come.”

The dog daughter descended saw the great sea spread out before her and the shell money people, camped near the river. They greeted her, welcomed her, and invited her to a feast. She ate ravenously of all the strange food. Acorn mash, and things from the sea. Things she had never known.  She ate till she was full, then returned back over the hill to her people, the dog people.

Her mother cried out joyously at her return, and the daughter vomited on to the ground all that she had consumed.

“So much food you have brought us, you must return to where you have come. We must eat like this again.” And her siblings and her mother gobbled up the vomit and were satisfied.

She returned for two whole weeks, and was fed, and returned to feed her whole family.   On the fifteenth day, when she returned to the shell money people again, the chief of that people asked her to marry his son, and she did.

After the wedding ceremonies, the chief’s son was glad to take her to his ‘ap. So he looked for her amidst the revelry and could not find her.  He walked down the dunes, looking for her, and calling her name.  Then, in the moonlight, he saw her at the mouth of the river, where his people came to shit. She was covered in shit, piling it into her mouth. He turned to run, and she saw him.

In shame, she returned to her dog people in the hills.  Her mother saw her and asked what was the matter.

“I had bad fortune. I wasn’t lacking in food, but I wanted to eat shit.  My new husband saw me eat shit.  I don’t want to go back again.”  

Her family was ashamed. They all turned into animals, her mother and her brothers and sisters all turned into animals. She did not.









Explanatory Notes

The Chumash tribe occupied a large swath of California’s central coast ranging as far south as Los Angeles, as far north as Monterey, and as far east as Bakersfield and Porterville. The modern history of the Chumash appears to be a hotly contested issue in anthropological circles. Many modern scholars and commentators, such as Dr. Van Horn, deny that the Chumash exist at all anymore in any meaningful way.  No native speaker of the language is currently alive, though there is a movement led by the Santa Ynez Chumash (the only federally recognized band of Chumash) to revitalize their language.  All of the italicized language used by the Chumash characters in this story is an English approximation of words in Chumash.

A few things are not contested.  First, that European contact had a devastating impact on the Chumash.  Even a conservative estimate of the Chumash population pre-contact numbers the people at about 15,000.  Within a generation of European contact, that number had dwindled into the hundreds.  Second, that the Chumash were a matriarchal people and their bloodlines were traced through the mothers.  I have alluded to this by leaving the names of the women untranslated.  Finally, the Chumash, at least those living on or near the coast, were some of the first American peoples to use currency, in the form of abalone and other shells.

The college mentioned in the story is loosely based on Thomas Aquinas College, located in the hills above Ojai, CA in Ventura County.  The rock mentioned in the story actually exists, and modern scholarship seems to be in agreement that it was used by the Chumash for, among other things, fertility rites and astrological predictions.  The story about bones being discovered during the construction of the college is true.  The story of a college administrator hiding such a fact may be apocryphal, but several sources close to the college attest to its truth.  Mountain Lion’s tale of his mother’s ancestry, however bizarre it may appear to modern readers, is a traditional Chumash myth called “The Dog Girl”


Glossary


‘antap:  The secret society of Chumash who practiced their medicine and religion.  Forced into hiding after European contact, little is known about their rituals.


‘ap:  the traditional Chumash hut. It was an elongated dome structure, framed by willow reeds and covered with grasses and other leafy material.  Some could accommodate several families.


Humqaq:  translated as “The Western Gate”, this area near Pt. Conception was believed by the Chumash to be the stepping off point for souls into the upper world, Shimilaqsha


Hutash: The Chumash equivalent of “mother Earth.” A goddess.


Shimilaqsha:  The upper world in the three-tiered world of Chumash cosmology. Living humans resided in the middle world.  Eagle occupied the upper world, whose wing movements created certain astronomical events, like eclipses.


siliyuk: the word indicates both the secrecy of the ‘antap and the language they spoke in their rituals.


Sky Snake: Chumash name for the Milky Way, believed to be a line of souls traveling through Shimilaqsha


Yokut: a tribe related to the Chumash, who existed in and around Porterville, CA





I almost stopped at the mention of Popova, because ugh. But I'm glad I went through the whole thing. The fish story is a cool story. I struggle with this problem all of the time. I think I am getting increasingly distracted. It is hurting me at work even.


I gave to Bishop Gallegos Maternity home http://www.bgmh.org/


It's a charity my wife and I support often. It helps a vulnerable community right here in our hometown and it does it on a shoestring budget.


"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last confession. She's out there again."


Fr. Consani sighed. He had spoken to the woman. Even sternly chased her away two Saturdays ago, and now, he supposed, she just waited till things were in full swing. Till the line was long and confronting her would be more of an interruption than it was worth. 


"We'll keep our voices down," he said, as he gave the benediction.


Corkie Trulia opened the door to her apartment, ignored the sqwaking parakeet flying from perch to table to chair. She sat down on her couch oblivious to the pile of bird shit staining her pants and cried. It was, if anyone had bothered to hear, a real symphony. The wail of an 18th century Russian widow, the choking and gagging of a child mid-tantrum, the tearless hard sobs of a man being served divorce papers in front of his children, the whimpering of a callous teenager with his guard down, the sniffles of a gently wounded toddler, the hysterical screams of a woman betrayed.



It took her over an hour before she was calm again, and only then did she pull down the notebook off the shelf.


John Francis had converted to Catholicism for his wife. She was beautiful, he was lustful, and she wouldn't marry him otherwise. To say his conversion was disingenuous isn't accurate, but the rituals and practices still baffled him. He thumbed slowly through "A Guide To An Examination Of Conscience" as he sat in a pew awaiting his turn at the confessional. 


The complexity and numerosity of his heretofore unknown sins baffled him. Oral sex - whoops - but OK in marriage - OK good - But ejaculation must occur inside the woman - whoops again.  


Violation of copyright laws - really? He reached in his coat pocket and fingered the thin DVD case he had bought on the station platform on his way to the church and cursed. Whoops again. And again.


Corkie leaned forward as John entered the confessional. She knew he was a new one. Had seen him take the plunge at Easter. New ones, she knew, could be great, or they could be painfully boring. Sometimes awkward, which was OK, but didn't really serve her purposes.


"Bless me father for I have sinned."


Corkie leaned back and smiled. He had a penetrating baritone. Boring or not this one would be easy.


"Bob," Fr. Nick said to his pastor, "I've been getting more complaints about the woman on Saturdays."


Fr. Consani sighed.


"I know. I've talked to her. When a penitent is concerned, we keep our voices down. What else can we do?"


"But who is she?"


"Hell if I know, she wouldn't say. She looks put together enough. Not great, but not homeless. We're a church, we can't exactly call the cops on a trespasser who sits in the church pews. That's what they're for."


"Would you mind if I talked to her next week?"


"Just don't do anything stupid."


******


"Why do they do it?" Corkie asked unbidden as Fr. Nick sat down next to her in the pew.


Nick shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about.


In a flash, Nick wondered why people come in here. What do they need from a church? How do they react once inside? Why are some people more needy than others? Is it because they genuinely have a lot of things going wrong in their lives right now, or because they just… are the kind of people who come into churches and ask lots of questions?


For Nick, church is work. For everyone else, church is something greater than themselves, a way of connecting with their lives and communities. Lots of people use church to socialize, but this person just comes in, does her thing, and leaves. It’s not exactly a great situation for anyone.


What if she’s causing strain in the rest of the church, Nick wondered. Does this happen often? Are there dozens more like her? How do we deal with some people who end up taking most of our time? Are we ignoring others who genuinely need our help, but express it in less direct ways?


Right now, though, she needed an answer.


“Who’s ’they'?,” Nick asked.


Suddenly, an F-15 screamed down and slammed into the church. Fr. Nick threw his body over the strange woman as flames engulfed the church.

High above, the pilot parachuted down. "Fucking goose..."


Love this question.  It really depends on the timing. I live in Sacramento now, so if we just had a day, probably drive up to one of the weird gold prospecty towns in the foothills and have a few drinks at a dive bar, come back to sac and walk along the river trail, then head to the kitchen for dinner (http://www.thekitchenrestaurant.com/), then take a cab to downtown for cocktails the rest of the night. In the morning we could walk around the capitol and maybe check out the crocker art museum, which also has a good lunch.


If we had more time we could actually take advantage of the thing that everyone says is great about sacramento: it's close to everything.


wine tasting in napa, maybe go to stinson beach or get some fresh oysters at hog island, head in to San Francisco to eat and drink ourselves silly. All < 2 hr drive away. Skiing or mountain biking in Tahoe, same. 


Would definitely want to take them down through the Delta country. Its so wild, you drive along dikes down the american and sacramento rivers and you would swear you were in Mississippi or Louisiana. People living in houseboats, eating crawfish, very hillbilly. Completely different world just about 20 miles from Sac and 50 miles from SF.


Cosmo cafe was where the cool kids (not the popular kids) hung out. They had all ages punk shows every weekend. You could smoke cigarettes and hang out with college kids even though it was the summer before your freshman year of high school. It was a coffee shop run by kids who wore leather with lots of patches, talked about Food Not Bombs, and were my introduction to the wide variety available in the body piercing sector.


I met Katie Little (this is her actual name) at a show there one night. She came right up to me and offered me a cigarette. When I had to go because of curfew she offered to pick me up the bands 7 inch and drop it off the next day. I said ok without giving her my address.


She was tall and all legs and had a haircut that was the approximate shape and shade of Shirley Temple at age 10.  She drove a black Dodge Ram that had been lifted. She wore a loose army surplus jacket over bright tank tops and daisy dukes. She was a high school sophomore. and she was in to me.


She dropped the 7 " off the next day and asked if I wanted to go for a ride. I did. We went to the empty parking lot of a giant lutheran church that had these weird alcoves made of contrete with benches inside them. It was a great place to make out. She let me put my hands down her pants but never reciprocated. Mostly we made out. a lot. She tasted like cigarettes and cinnamon gum, and whatever audacious candy scented perfumes 16yo punk rock sexpots were wearing in the summer of 94.


We would go hang out with my friend down the street and "watch a movie" which was making out while my friend awkwardly tried to enjoy Jurrassic Park on VHS. 


My father did not approve. Not only had I not yet reached the household-mandated minimum dating age of 16, but the girl i was hanging out with was an amazon with a bad attitude in a lifted truck. it was almost something out of an 80s teen flick. 


After that I resorted to furtive phone calls telling her where to meet me and I would tell my parents I was going for a walk. She would come pick me up in that truck and wed find a convenient place to resume making out and heavy petting. I don't know that we really had much in the way of conversations that summer. Eventually my dad got wise and took off in a car to cruise the neighborhood 10 minutes after i left for a "walk". They drove right past us in that lifted truck. i could tell from the look on his face things were not going to be good.


Later that month katie called me, super high and giggly as shit. "Why are you so happy ?" I asked.


"Because im not pregnant!" she said.


I had enough biology to know I wasn't the one who could've made her think she was. 


Took me awhile to process that.


One day I was down in the basement and she showed up at our front door. My dad answered. I dont know what he said exactly, but the gist was probably "stay away from my little boy you she devil"


Katie called me crying after that. It was hard to care. I hung up without saying much.


How many words is 250 I thought before I started writing. Then I thought, I'll just reply "250 words", but nixed that idea because some of my previous responses have been pretty lackluster. And then I was like, wait, you are trying to impress someone? Win? Win the quirky internet experiment with a stranger. Seek out his approval by your witty responses to his  questions? What the fuck is wrong with you? This is why you ended up in law school and why you went broke after two years of professional poker before that. Then as I kept writing I sounded more and more neurotic. Which, funny thing, most of my friends would describe me as pretty calm and unflappable, but one of my friends who knows me best always says "underneath that dumb wop exterior you are really just an anxious Woody Allen."  He's right. About some things anyway.


So that was 150 words, give or take, these next 100 are going to be a real doozy Im sure. I like this project, Jon. It's got me writing, well fun writing, I write a shit ton for work as a lawyer, but often thats pretty dry. I once thought I would be a poet. Thought it for a long time really.  Somebody said "inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet." They were right. About some things anyway. I had moleskines I carried around everywhere, little verses, little turns of phrase that would catch my ear I would notice. Sometimes I would write them down. ive got 100s of pages written, now all transferred into a Word doc. here's a half page more and 33 more words than you asked for.


I've never been much of a fighter. In 8th grade I had a love hate relationship with the football coach's son, Ryan Cloney. Sometimes we would be buddies, other times we would be antagonistic. He had a nintendo and I didn't. He knew where his dad's porn stash was (porn magazines! printed on paper! hidden in the back of a file cabinet, fyi.) We were both white suburban kids, but Ryan is the guy the word "wigger" was invented for. I just looked him up, he works in a food prep kitchen and lives with his parents. Anyway.. . . 


 One day on the playground he kept "stepping to me." I don't really know how things progressed, but I ended up on top of him. i was holding his arms down so he would stop punching up. We both got brought to the principals office. I know it was 8th grade because I lost a contact, and 8th grade was the first year I had contacts instead of big nerdy glasses.


The resolution? We both got suspended. He was bleeding and I was not, so maybe I "won." But then I got home, and my dad informed me I would be spending my three day suspension either sleeping, or steaming off the wallpaper throughout our entire house. So I think maybe I lost.


In 5th grade I ran headfirst into another kid in PE class and knocked off the top half of one of my front teeth, exposing the nerve. It hurt like a motherfucker. 13 years later I was the temporary superintendent of a trailer park in Porterville, CA. That's a story in itself, but the experience was miserable. I lived in a duplex that was so roach infested I didnt need an alarm clock because I would inevitably be awakend by roaches crawling on my face. Every night I went to Right Aid and bought a fifth of Scotch and two cans of RAID. clerk probably thought I was nuts.


Anyway, One afternoon I was trying to bite off a hangnail and the fake top half of my tooth popped off. This time it did not hurt like a motherfucker. 

that was almost ten years ago and I still havent got it fixed. It occasionally hurts. Im worried about it. I need to wait till I have decent dental coverage to fix it.


I still have a long scar on the top of my thumb from when I was trying to shave some styrofoam out of a bike helmet with a razor blade and slipped and caught my thumb. It was on my birthday, sometime in junior high. My mom put the membrane of a raw egg on it to close it. Works pretty well.


My right knee is missing the bursar sac after I got hit by people running in two different directions during a higschool football game. It felt like my leg was ripped in half when it first happened.


I have a huge lump on the back of my upper right thigh. I call it my third ass cheek. I was bouldering in Ojai, CA up a 20ish or so ft boulder with a large crack running the length of it. I was in the crack towards the top when the foothold I was on crumbled and I shot down the crack, hit a ledge with my ass, which kicked me out into the grass. The bruise was amazing. It lasted weeks. I was in college and my roommate always wanted an update on what color this dinner size contusion on my ass had changed that week. blue purple yellow green. Im not really sure what the lump IS. scar tissue I guess?


I think thats it. happy 4th.


Hey 10 year old me. Worry less. Listen to your parents more, but not about theater. Play outside more. Stay away from Ryan Cloney. In the future you can download a pirated copy of the latest video game in under an hour.  We don't use floppies anymore, hard drives are gigantic. Never stop writing. Try to draw more. Worry less about what other people think, dad is right, it's usually their issue not yours. Girls are not as exciting as you will soon think, until you find the one that is. So dont sweat it. Grade school barely matters, high school pretty much sets your future, or at least your future opportunities. Avoid white lies, they lead to darker ones. Listen to grandma and pick one spot out the window to look at every day. You will remember it forever. Everything gets better. The next ten years will feel like they really suck sometime, but youll get over it. If you find yourself not getting over it, find out why, then get over it. Mom is smarter than you think. There's nothing wrong with God. 


Hey 65 year old me. Hope youve stopped drinking and smoking and taken up regular exercise or this letter probably wont have reached you. Sorry about that. Ms. Zedlig said college students treat their bodies as if they are buying on credit. I kept going after college. I hope you got better at being a dad and not worse. I hope you took your faith more seriously. I hope that you have less to regret now than you had 30 years ago. I hope your marriage is better. I hope you have grandkids. I hope you're retired comfortably, but not lavishly. I hope your children have never made you cry by things they did as adults, but lets be honest, we probably deserve that one. I hope you have a view of the ocean.


//


That one's kind of rough, emotionally speaking.




That's cool. Interim conversations you had would also be interesting,

like the one you mentioned about that first story we had to write a

middle to


1) Write a letter to your fellow contestants of The Long Talk.


Hey y'all. Was anyone else a little jarred by being referred to as "contestants"? I mean I guess I was always aware in the back of my mind that this was a "last man standing" kind of thing. But as we've narrowed down to a small set of folks and shared our writing with each other and had conversations with Jon, it's felt much more collaborative than competitive. I'm hoping Jon will share these letters with the group, as he did with the short stories. Really the only thing I want to say to y'all is "thank you." Thank you for continuing to write back so this experiment could go on. It's made my life better, even if only in small ways. So thank you all for that, and thanks to Jon as well.


-Rich



2) Write an explanation of The Long Talk to someone who's never heard

of it. Not just the rules but anything you've learned, discovered,

etc.


The Long talk was something I saw mentioned by someone Twitter. You sign up for an email newsletter that requires a response. Every day you respond, you get another email the following day. if you fail to respond by 9 AM PDT the following morning, then you're out. No more emails. 


The original sign up sheet said it was limited to the first 100 people who signed up. I think there were slightly less than that, but Jon Bell, the creator of the newsletter, never revealed how many signed up. He revealed dropouts in percentages. I think we are now down to 5 participants.


Jon has done a good job keeping the prompts interesting, though some were definitely more fun to respond to than others. I'm sure Jon would say the same thing about responses he had to read. Jon also responds to questions and holds conversations outside the strict confines of the daily prompts, so that's been kind of cool. A pen-pal type vibe.  It's been fun. I think it could be fun to do with other people, like a rotating cast of guest hosts. I'm not sure I would like to be the one writing the prompts, but maybe.


Olivia was 17, tall with curly blond hair. She was sensitive, cried easily at things her parents told her were not worth crying over. She was in a coffee shop. Bored, mad at her boyfriend. She saw a chubby 8th grader in the back of the club, bobbing his head awkwardly to the music. She walked up to him. "Hi," she said.


Fillip, the actual dang vampire, could feel the eyes on him from the other side of the cafe as he sipped a middling burgundy. It was early, he thought, but maybe he could get started early, home to bed early, maybe have some time to catch up on some reading. He set down his glass and slowly turned his head to meet the gaze that still rested on him.She would do, he thought, as his eyes met hers and she slowly began to walk toward him, as he knew she would. He ordered her a glass and offered it to her. She accepted it clumsily, took one sip, grimaced, and set the wine down. He stood and offered his arm. She took it and they walked out of the cafe. As they reached the door a man's voice squeaked "Puis-je vous aider?"


"Fuck," muttered Fillip.


"Wha? Oh, this?" Pete replied. "This is an iPad. I'm just- wait, why are you dressed like a vampire?"


"A what," Filip, the actual dang vampire, asked quite disengenuously.


"You're wearing a long black cape with a satin red lining,  you have two long canine incisors, you have a widows peak that reaches practically to the bridge of your nose, your skin is pale, and your novelty tshirt says "FUCK GARLIC" so basically you couldn't be dressed more like a vampire if you tried."


"Canine incisors," sputtered Fillip, an actual dang vampire, "I don't even know what that means!"


"Sorry," Pete began to explain, "I spent some time in dental school awhile ago. But basically you are a walking  vampire cosplayer."


"Cosplayer?" sputtered Fillip, an actual dang vampire.


"Nevermind." said Pete, pretty sure he was dealing with an actual vampire, but also pretty sure it was a wildly incompetent one.


"So do you want to get a bite to eat," he asked, "maybe something Italian?"


He was so sure of his own cleverness in inviting a vampire to a garlic laced dinner that he never stopped to consider the possibility that the whole garlic thing was an old wives tale. A totally inaccurate account of Vampire biology that most vampires - those aware of the tale anyway- found vaguely insulting. I mean, for an immortal being that feeds on the life force of humans, it was pretty silly to think a root vegetable, however pungent, would somehow be the magic bullet to end immortality.


Though stranger things, of course, did occur in nature. The mighty slug, capable of ruining acres worth of garden, could *actually* be destroyed with a little table salt. Bad luck for the slug, or bad natural selection, or something. 


Anyway, Pete was hardly thrown off when Fillip, an actual dang vampire, agreed to grabbing dinner at La Bella Lugosi down the street.


They ntered the restaraunt to the strains of Pavarotti being pushed through the two tinny speakers mounted over the door of the restaurant. A waiter with noticeably long canine incisors approachd the table to take their order.


"To start, let;s have the roasted garlic and the green garlic marinated gnudi, how does that sound, Fillip?"


Fillip, an actual dang vampire, nodded his head gently in assent. He wasa a sucker for a good gnudi.


"Do you like opera?" Pete asked.


"I have," said Fillip, an actual dang vampire. 


"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?" Pete asked, a little more directly this time.


Fillip hissed gently, inaudibly to normal humas, and asked "what"?


Before Fillip could do much else, the first course arrived,


Welcome to day forty! The assignment is a 150 page novella riffing on the themes of early Balzac. If you don't hit 150 pages you are out.


I am going to the DMV in an hour so this could be pretty fun.


//


The guy from UP has grown a little taller and now wears expensive Italian loafers. 


The girl wears tie dye and isn't sure how old she is at any given moment. 


Was that Ron pearlman on the huffy in the intersection, or just a homeless guy who looked like him?


Walking around, babbling, great importance, 18 months old. 


Sitting, sullen, fat, "NEXT!"


Your shirt is too nice and too tight for the dmv. 


An Abercrombie model, turned to alcoholism, sitting on a couch, bloated in his salmon shorts. 


Pregnant. Grumpy. Usually. 


Reflecting the hot white sun from his topsiders to his teeth. 


Shaking from an unknown illness and hiding it. 



It took having a family of my own to see how much the family you grow up w looms over your life




[Pending]





I was pretty close. . .



1)

35

2)

same

3)

I don't know. I was looking forward to always being surprised by you.


////






You won.*


We’re down to three people so I’m going to call a three-way tie. Hope that’s not too disappointing. I know I said we’d go until there’s one person but whew. I think it’s time to call it. It takes a surprising amount of effort to wrangle all these answers and I think making it past 54k words is a good place to call it a day. (Plus I was pretty sure none of you were ever going to stop)


Here’s what I’m planning. It’ll be a book of some sort. I could have made each person have their own chapter or had each chapter represent a day. In the end, I’ve decided to blend the two approaches.


Most of the book will focus on all the answers I received in one day, a chapter apiece. But at three points in the book I’m going to do special chapters that highlight all of one person's answers in a giant personalized chapter.


(one strange bit is how to deal with all the collaborative story stuff. That may have to be treated slightly differently.)


So! You win! A hearty congratulations! Pat yourself on the back :)


I’ll write more later about the specifics but thank you for everything you taught me. Thanks so much for your patience, your honesty, and your willingness to try something new and strange. I think we made something pretty great.


I’ll get you a transcript soon.


Ish.




Cheers,

Jon