Who is real? Not me.

It has finally come clear to me that the great social experiment of an Internet of ideas is doomed to fail, if anything because it’s impossible to tell what is real. Let me give you a concrete example.

In February, Slashdot reported the story of a German minister whose Wikipedia entry was falsely adjusted to include an additional segment to his already long full name. Media picked this up and published the incorrect name. While the Wikipedia was reverted, people pointed to the reputable news articles that clearly showed he had this additional name, and so, Wikipedia accepted the reference. This is a case where the Internet’s open architecture resulted in chaos, or at least a false reality.

Here’s another example: the whole point of my blog was to identify these other people in the world who claim to be Mark Jackman. My attempts to contact them or their online webmasters yielded no fruit. I wish I spent more time focusing on this noble goal instead of talking about things unrelated to anything because resolution of this issue has become critical: someone is claiming I am not real. With that, I see that the experiment this blog is serving has failed, and it’s sign of where the Internet is bound to take us: a place where identity is meaningless and can be casually exchanged for nothing. If Oprah can purchase her identity on Twitter, why can’t someone buy mine with nothing more than sheer will?

But here’s the truth. I’m real. This is really my blog. I really work for deckArta (our website is down right now, but it’ll come back, you’ll see!) And so now my very existence is at question. Though it’s true, it is my birthday, and I appreciate there is one final acknowledgment that I am who I am, because before too long my coworkers will ask me to show my driver’s license, my girlfriend is going to say that she has no idea who she slept next to all these years, and further down the road when the Internet is the sole gateway to our consciousnesses, I will disappear in a puff of inconsequential smoke.

It may be that truth is fiction, and I am dead, but not without taking someone with me. Happy Birthday.

An example of my daily email chaos

This is how email correspondence occurs during a standard day in my life. I believe the world owes me an extra gold star when I get to heaven for putting up with the immaturity surrounding me. Follow the descent into chaos.

From Me to a short email list of friends, subject: an email invitation to one of these new social networking sites
I’ve given in to some technology. Now, I accept pretty much all invitations that I get on LinkedIn, Friendster, Facebook and MySpace. But I try to draw a line after that, and so far have refused to set up accounts on Orkut, Plaxo, Ryze, AdultFriendFinder, etc.  Strangely, I’ve gotten three requests just in the past week to link to someone on Yet Another Social Networking Service that I’ve never heard of or have shunned so far. I’m not sure why but for some reason I’ve never trusted Plaxo with my personal information; I think something about their privacy agreement put me off when I first read it years ago.  That the four I allow happen to have gotten past my threshold of disdain is not really an endorsement of them over the others (beyond their relative popularity and success), but really more just a coincidence of when I happened to first hear of them.

Response from my friend Rob:
Is this person a family member? How odd!

Response from Me:
Oh sorry, maybe I should have included an explanation.  Yes, she’s my dad’s cousin’s uncle’s roommate.  I got the invite via Pulse/Plaxo and sent this response directly to her.  Thought you guys might be interested in my sense of overall distrust for online networking sites, especially combined with my irrational use of several of them.

Response from Jeremy (and we descend):
That reminds me, I saw the most interesting cloud this morning.  It looked exactly like two turkeys fighting over a piece of rye bread.  Or a cloud.

Response from Rob:
That reminds me, I had a dream that you were sucking my cock. Oh no wait, I was just remembering our youth.

Response from Me:
That was your *cock*??  Jeezus, I can’t believe I never figured that out.  Rob you got me again!

Response from Rob:
Wow. nice comeback! Speaking of comebacks, hows your mom?

Response from Jeremy:
Both of your moms’ are just fine. They say hi, and are curious when you’re going to visit for dinner.

Response from Rob:
Hey that reminds me, your mom has a big butt.

Response from Jeremy:
More cushion for the pushin.

Response from Me:
I dropped everyone else off this email. Remind me never to include you both on a public email thread again.

If I don’t sound angry, it’s because I’m a moron. And I love these guys.

Eww ewww EWWWWWWWW

I took up biking and gave it up all in a single day. I mean biking 15 miles to work one-way, what was I thinking? How do those middle aged guys do that without having to stop every 15 minutes at a bathroom along the road?

Everything was going so well until 20 minutes into my ride. It hit me. I had to go really bad. There wasn’t any place in sight along the local county highway, at least no where I wanted to stop. I’ve dealt with poison ivy; no way I’m going in the woods.

50 minutes into the ride I couldn’t take it anymore. 2.2 more miles of biking was going to be 2.2 more miles of pure agony.

So I stopped.

I stopped at John’s Backyard Tavern.

I asked for the key, not yet hopping back and forth between each foot.

I turned the key in the door.

And the sight, OH MY GOD! EWW EWW EWW!

2.2 miles nothing, I was going to make it back to the office. And when I did, damnit, someone had urinated in the bathroom again, but I didn’t care. I hauled my sweaty (and now tough) biker body into the bathroom and let all the agony out.

But really, this bathroom was so bad, I had to Google it on the internet. And sure enough, I found it, and now I share this atrociousness with you.

Eww Eww Eww

My Doppleganger has haters.

More about my doppleganger who likes to make helmets in his spare time: Does this guy have a job?

Another forum where I’ve been excerpted, this one from March ‘06 in which Clifton100 says “This nerd gives step by step instructions to build a helmet”

And you know what? I feel like I should stick up for my doppleganger because there’s this quote from a stupid dork who says:

“thats the stupidest galactus helmet I’ve ever seen”

This from a guy whose avatar is a pair of giggly elves.  What a loser!

A recent conundrum

The general topic of human excretions is really not something I like to discuss, even as a joke, but my love for solutions to interesting problems overrides my discomfort. Enough of this meta-blogging: I’ll get to the point.

There has been a recurring hygeiene problem in my office. I typically arrive at work in the morning between 8:35 and 8:55 AM. It’s true — I don’t arrive at 8:30 and I almost never arrive at 9AM unless there is a particular need to. I like the regularity and reliability. I would probably just arrive at 8:35 every morning, but the variety solely due to whether a certain cool, attractive babe works out at the gym that morning. I don’t know who she is, I just know she’s cute. Honestly I’m a little intimidated and won’t say hi. Now, if she’s there, I tend to linger at the gym for a few minutes longer. The distraction is my only exception to my otherwise rigid morning routine. On the days she’s at the gym, I’ll talk with her, and then rush to the office. When and where I shower depends on this too. If she is not there, I’ll use a little time to shower at the gym, and if she is, I’ll generally rush to the office, and shower there. It’s a good idea to point out here that the hygene issue is not my own.

On the days when I arrive at work around 8:55, there is always a puddle of urine scattered at one of the urinals. It’s disgusting, particularly because the bathroom is cleaned once a day, in the middle of the night. On the occasions where I’ve worked late, the toilets are typically cleaned around two AM. This is not a reliable piece of data; I don’t work at two AM all that often, but it’s clear when things get done varies — they don’t seem to respect reliable scheduling as much as me.

Speaking of unreliable schedules, there’s no way to predict when Amy comes to the gym. Some weeks she’ll be there every day, some weeks only once. I could never live with that lifestyle.

So the question is: why is someone peeing on the bathroom floor only when I’m not there to see it?

More identity problems?

You may remember, I intended to create this blog as a way to properly take hold of my online identity. So while I haven’t been posting, I have continued my sleuthing, and found something: another impersonator who likes to dress up in a big purple helmet!

Certain people, I don’t know if I like them, talked about me… or at least the fake me, at:

http://forum.newsarama.com/archive/index.php/t-115414.html

Do a search for “pigorfig” in this post. You’ll find several comments associated with it.

Okay, at least I have groupies, better than most nerds could ever hope for.

Inverse Namesake

The other day my buddy Jeremy asked me:

Hey Mark -

I’m trying to figure something out. My mother told me that I was named after the famous actor, Jeremy Piven. So that means that I am his namesake. A namesake is someone named after someone else. So that means I can say in a sentence, “I am Jeremy Piven’s namesake.” However, Jeremy Piven can’t say that I am his namesake. What is the word that means “opposite of namesake”?

By the way, did you know Jeremy Piven was 71 years old? Me either. Those movie studios sure are good.

Love the new blog!

—
I am your best pal.
http://www.justbecausejeremy.com

I don’t know. I did some research and came up empty. Rich Popper is the best linguist I know, and also the smartest guy I know. When he returns from his sabbatical I’ll ask him. In the meantime, I’m going with ‘Inverse Namesake’, which may not be the best word, it’s a clear communication.

While we’re on the subject, did you know that my inverse namesake is the town of Jackman, Maine? I never lived there, but my parents are from there. There’s not much going on in Jackman lately, but they tend to make a big deal about their more famous residents.

Got Smart?

I just watched the trailer for the new movie, Get Smart. I’ve actually just watched it five times, and I laughed every time. There’s something about Steve Carell’s well-timed prat comedy that just works. But I’m really not getting my hopes up for the movie. Those could be the best jokes in the whole film, leaving 88 minutes of farting, and situations that justify farting. I’m still stinging from the promise of the trailer from The Phantom Menace.

So it’s not really the movie that excites me, it’s the parade of old episodes of GS: TOS that Nick at Nite will parade on the air, for me to collect and catalog.

My girlfriend insists I add some details of my recording style: I don’t have a TiVo or other PVR, but I do have a VCR. How about that! I still do all my TV recording with video cassettes and VCR+. Each video gets one adhesive sticker attached to the back of the video. If I don’t stick the sticker on correctly, all video contents must be transferred to a new video and the sticker reapplied. No mistakes shall be tolerated. Pens for writing on the videos have changed throughout the years, and the current writing implement of choice is a Sharpie Ultra-Fine point black pen. I tried pencil once, but shhh, don’t tell anyone it’s hard to read those titles I wrote in the 80s.

But I digress. VCRs always worked for me, why change to that newfangled DVD technology? With all the newly taped GS episodes, I’ll finally have something substantial to put next to my near-complete collection of The Simpsons.

Sanchez

I have great friends. Since we’re all pretty smart, we end up having free-cycles during the day. Shhh, don’t admit that to anyone, especially my boss, because then I’ll have to work harder, not smarter.

In a series of funny emails between me, Jeremy and my friend Rob, we started a discussion, and I just had to say,

“Get the heck out of here Jeremy!”

Oh ho ho, no no, that was just a reference to a really funny comic that my verb named friends and I like.

We did start a discussion, and in the middle of it, Jeremy blurts out:

“Wait, which one of you told me the ‘clean sanchez’ joke?”

Me:

“I think it was me, but I was just quoting Jon Stewart from earlier that week. He had a relevant, topical clip of a government wonk named Sanchez claiming not to have done anything wrong, which he made into that unbelievably wonderful pun.”

Rob:

By relevant, you mean, when it was originally aired and not now with the endless parade of reruns?

Me:

Right, relevant at the time. It was pretty recently that I saw it though, and I don’t remember whether it was current or during reruns…

Ok, a bit of searching confirms that it was from October 19 regarding the retirement of Lt. General Sanchez who had come clean about his opinions of the war. I still don’t remember whether I saw it recently during reruns and reported it to Jeremy, or if I saw it in October and it came up in more recent conversation with Jeremy.

And that’s all that I have to say right now. Sometimes, I just want to be myself, and have you love me even when I’m not funny.

Wargames does NOT need a sequel

So the other day my buddy Jeremy found out that a sequel to Wargames was being produced:

Oh yes, I believe this will require a group outing:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865957/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames_2:_The_Dead_Code

—
I am your best pal.
http://www.justbecausejeremy.com

And I was all like:

“Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks. NOT UNLIKE THIS SEQUEL!!!!!”

Snap!