Microserfs
Page 17
Susan got a job offer from General Magic - that guy she chatted up at the Halloween party recommended her - and Todd got a job offer from Spectrum HoloByte. At first I couldn't imagine why - then he told us that
someone at the gym must have recommended him. It's occupational cannibalism here. Both offers are tempting. But Susan's got too much money stoked into the Oop! fire to leave, and Todd's simply too into it. But it's nice to know that if Oop! flushes the toilet, there's a Plan B ready.
Oop! isn't about work. It's about all of us staying together.
TUESDAY
We ate lunch in Chinatown up in SF only today, and there were these paper birds strung from the ceiling and this little kid who wanted to touch the birds and his father lifted him up to touch them. I didn't realize, but I was staring at the whole thing the whole time, and zoned out of the conversation, and then I realized Karla was watching me.
* * *
Time time time. It's such a current subject. It's like money - if you don't have it, you think about it too much.
Karla's been thinking about time, too. Tonight during shiatsu training, with me flat on my stomach, my back and sides being poked and pummeled, her voice, disconnected from her body, informed me that in general, "One's perception of time's flow is directly linked to the number of connections one has to the outer world. Technology increases the number of connections, thus it alters the perception of having 'experienced' time.
"It's a bell-curve relationship. There's actually an optimum point at which the amount of technology one owns extends the amount of time one perceives or experiences.
"It's as if your brain holds a tiny, cashew-shaped thalamus going tick-tick-tick while it meters out your time dosage for you. There's a technological equilibrium point, after which, it's all downhill."
* * *
Abe e-mailed a response to my time stuff:
Once you've used your brain flat-out, you can't go into the SLOW mode. You can't drive an Infinite J-30 and then get downgraded to an Daewoo. Brains don't work that way.
WEDNESDAY
This morning Dad was singing "Road to Nowhere." Michael is reprogramming my father. I have to figure out a way of dealing with this.
* * *
Whenever Anatole gets too European and insufferable - complaining too much, basically - we say to him, "Hey, Anatole, your turtleneck's showing." He doesn't get this particular joke. "But I am not wearing a turtleneck . . ."
Anatole told us this really great thing, how at Apple they used to have a thing called RumorMonger that allowed employees to anonymously input up to one hundred ASCII characters worth of gossip into the system. So Todd hacked together a quick in-house version for our network, called Rumor-Meister. It got way out of control almost immediately:
1) SUSAN SHOPS AT TARGET BUT PUTS HER STUFF IN NORDSTROM BAGS
2) DANIEL SELLS HIS USED BOXERS VIA MAIL ORDER . . . $5.00 PER DAY OF WEAR
3) BUG SWEATS TO THE OLDIES
4) DAN . . . THOSE DOCKERS . . . HIP!
5) TODD HAS SAGGY NIPPLES FROM TOO MUCH BODY BUILDING THEY'RE CALLED 'BITCH TITS'
5) TODD WEARZ DEPENDS WHEN HE BENCH PRESSES BECUZ UTHERWIZE HE'LL EVACUATE HIS BOWELS ON THE BENCH
7) KARLA PAID TO SEE "THE BODY GUARD"
8) BUG LAUGHS AT GARFIELD CARTOONS
9) KARLA CAN'T ACCESSORIZE
10) SUSAN HAS COMBINATION SKIN
11) TODD SMOKES 'MORE' CIGARETTES
12) I CAN HEAR KARLA'S COLOSTOMY BAG SLOSHING
13) ETHAN'S FERRARI IS A KIT CAR
14) ETHAN BUYS TIRES AT SEARS
15) BUG LOVES BARNEY
16) KARLA THINKS SHE'S A SUMMER BUT SHE'S REALLY A FALL
17) BUG HAS 2 RAFFI CASSETTES
18) DAN HAS A YANNI CD IN HIS CAR
19) ETHAN'S VISA LIMIT IS $3,000
20) SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY
21) DAN: LISTERINE KILLS GERMS THAT CAN CAUSE BAD BREATH
22) DAN STILL LIVES WITH HIS MOTHER
23) BUG SHOPS AT CHESS KING
24) MICHAEL'S SHIRT SMELL LIKE GERBIL PEE
Todd quickly removed the program from the system.
* * *
Ethan had a time crisis. "I look at my Daytimer and see: CES in January, COMDEX in May, Tim's wedding in July, etc., and I realize the whole year is over before it's even begun. What's the point of it all? It's all of it so predictable."
* * *
Mom won a swim meet this afternoon, so we dug out the nickels from under the seat cushions and went out for a low-fat dinner to celebrate. She's so fit these days.
* * *
I was driving down from the 280, down Peter Coutts Road, up by Systemix, Wall Data, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and the Wall Street Journal printing plant - up where Dad used to work before he was rendered obsolete - and who should I see taking a stroll together but Dad and Michael! They were lost in discussion, their arms donnishly held behind their backs.
I pulled the car into a side street and ran out to join them. Upon hearing me yell their names, they turned around, absentmindedly interrupted, utterly unfazed at seeing me. I asked what they were doing and Dad said, "Oh, you know - just taking a stroll past the old hunting grounds" (IBM).
Cars hummed by. A tech firm's lawn sprinkler spritzed. I didn't know what to say, surrounded by all these blank buildings with glassed-out windows, these buildings where they make the machines that make the machines that make the machines.
I began walking up the hill with them and shortly we were in front of IBM. I felt humiliated for my father, because surely there'd be employees behind the reflecto windows saying, "Oh look, it's Mr. Underhill stalking us. He must have really lost it."
But Dad seemed unfazed. I said, "Dad, how can you even look at those people?"
He replied, "You know, Daniel, I have noticed that people are generally quite thrilled to have change enter their lives - disasters are weathered by people with a sturdiness that is often unlike their day-to-day personality."
Michael piped in, "Just think of the Mississippi River floods. All those people having barbecues up on their roofs, waving to the CNN helicopters - having a grand old time."
"Precisely," said Dad. "I've realized that people most dread the thought of actually initiating change in their lives and we old people are obviously the worst. It's hard coping with chaos and diversity. We old folks mistake the current deluge of information, diversity, and chaos as the 'End of History.' But maybe it's actually the Beginning."
This sounded like Michael-style words coming out of my father's mouth. Brainwashed!
He continued. "Old people have more or less dropped out of the process of creating old-fashioned-style history. We've been pushed to the side, and nobody's pointed out to us what we, the newly obsolete humans, are supposed to do."
"The only thing that is immune to change is our desire for meaning," added Michael, to my overweening annoyance.
We scurried across the street during a lull in the Lexuses, and began walking down the hill. "Don't ask me to explain this eight-jobs-in-a-lifetime reality we now inhabit. I could barely deal with the one-job-in-a-lifetime world," Dad said.
The sun was golden - birds swung in the sky. Cars purred at a stoplight. Dad looked so relaxed and happy. "I always assumed that history was created by think tanks, the DOE and the RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California. I assumed that history was something that happened to other people - out there. I never thought history was something my kid built in the basement. It's a shock."
I told him about the new word I'd learned, deletia, and Dad laughed.
"That's me!"
We were soon down at El Camino Real. I had to go back to my car. I asked, "Are you guys driving? You need a ride anywhere?"
"We'll walk," said Dad. "But thanks."
"See you back in the Habitrail," said Michael.
Yeah. Right.
* * *
Karla was outside the house wateri
ng the herb garden with a can when I drove up. I told Karla that it was really unChristmassy of me, but I wanted to kill Michael.
"Michael? What on earth for?"
"He's . . ."
"Yes?"
"He's stealing my father."
"Don't be silly, Dan. It's in your head."
"Dad never talks to me. He's always with Michael. Shit, I don't even know what he does with Michael. They could be selling bomb implosion devices to the Kazakhs for all I know."
"Maybe they've become life-partners," said Karla.
"What?"
"It's a joke, Dan. Calm down. Get a grip on yourself. Listen to yourself. First of all, Michael couldn't shoplift a Nestle's Crunch bar, let alone a parental unit. He's not the type. Has it ever occurred to you they might simply be friends?"
"He knows about Jed. He's trying to be Jed. And I can't compete."
"This is nonsense."
"Didn't I say that about you and your family?"
"But that's different."
"How?"
"Because .. . because it is."
"Good logic, Karla."
She came up to me. "Feel yourself - you're lucky you didn't get the killer flu. Your muscles are as rigid as a crowbar. You're making yourself sick thinking like this. Come on - I'll do your back. I'll talk you down from this."
As she plucked the knots from out of my body, removed the abandoned refrigerators and couches and sacks of garbage from underneath my skin, she talked in the way she does. She told me, "Bodies are like diskettes with tags. You click on to them and you can see the size and type of file immediately. On people, this labeling occurs on the face."
Prod, prod, rub, poke.
"If you know a lot about the world, that knowledge makes itself plain on your face. At first this can be a frightening thing to know, but you get used to it. Sometimes it can be off-putting. But I think it is only off-putting to people who are worried that they themselves are learning too much too quickly. Knowing too much about the world can make you unloving - and maybe unlovable. And your father's face is different now. He seems like a new man - different than when he first drove up to the old house in Redmond. However he may have changed, it's for the better. So don't lose sight of that."
Grudgingly: "All right."
If it weren't for Karla, sometimes I think I'd just implode.
FRIDAY, December 24,1993
Software fun: Work crawled to a standstill today as Bug shared anagram software that spits out all the combinations of words you can make with your name. Michael was mad, because we lost several combined people-hours doing it. Everyone's faxing and e-mailing their relatives and friends their name-as-anagram for Christmas tomorrow. It's the low-budget gift-giving solution.
Everybody's also downloading shareware and scuttling about the valley cobbling together melanges of bootleg software programs to give as presents. We're all broke!
* * *
It seems everybody's trying to find a word that expresses mare bigness than the mere word "supermodel" - hyper model - gigamodel - negamodel. Michael suggested that
our inability to come up with a word bigger than supermodel reflects our inability to deal with the crushing weight of history we've created for ourselves as a species.
* * *
We got off work early (7:00) to shop, but we all came back in around 10:00 and started working again, until around 1:00. Slaves, or what?
Around midnight, December 25, Susan grunted, "Uhhh, Merry Christmas." We all reciprocated, and then went back to work.
Christmas Day, 1993
We sat inside and opened prezzies over coffee. Outside it was Richie Cunningham weather - like from Happy Days when Ralph Malph and Potsie come over and ding the doorbell, and they're wearing their varsity coats and they say, "Hello, Mrs. C." and the weather outside is . . . simply weather.
But where is everybody's family? Why isn't everybody with their families! Nobody went home. Bug still can't face his parents in Idaho; Susan either (her mother is in Schaumberg, Illinois; her father is in Irvine, down south); Karla - not likely. Only Anatole went to visit his parents, and then only because they're three hours north in Santa Rosa.
* * *
Anyway, we're all so broke this year that we agreed not to buy anything expensive for anyone, and it was fun. Gag gifts. Christmas really brings out the geek in tech people:
• From Todd to Bug: a brown Wackenhut security baseball cap
• From Karla to me: the IBM PC version of The $100,000 Pyramid
• From me to Karla: a Hewlett-Packard calculator with jewels for buttons
• From Ethan to all of us: CandyCaller toy cellular phone filled with candies
• From Bug in all of our stockings: Dream Whip, nondairy whip topping
• From me to Karla: a Play-Doh fun factory insect-shaped insect extruding device ("Look-softer, less crumbly Play-Doh," she squealed.)
• From various people to various people: Ren & Stimpy screen-savers ("Screensavers are the macrame of the '90s," Susan boldly exclaimed.)
• From Susan to all of us: HANDMADE Martha-Stewart-y gift baskets, which made us all feel cheap. Michael asked her outright: "Susan, where did you find the discretionary time to assemble these?" She looked guilty, and then told Michael to piss off, and it was funny. Michael whispered to me: "Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time."
* * *
For some reason, everyone gave Susan premoistened towelette-related products. It's one of those jokes that went out of control the way sometimes things go out of control for no obvious reason. A spontaneous nonlinear event. She received:
• 124 klear screen™ premoistened towelettes, "with love from Dan and Karla" (I also mailed Abe a bottle of Spray-N-Clean so he can remove the nasal encrustations on his Mac screens)
• Celeste® sam-com 3205 premoistened towelettes specifically targeted for consumer electronics mouthpieces - from Ethan. (" 'Cleans and freshens communications
equipment.' I stole a wad of them from business class on United last year.")
• "Pocket Wetty" brand premoistened towelettes from Japan, made by Wakodo KK. (¥ 145, thank you, Anatole.)
* * *
Everybody gave Mom a rock for Christmas and she said they were the best presents she's ever had. Everybody tried to give her a really good rock. It's so weird - everyone genuinely tried to find a cool rock.
Todd made a joke about Charlie Brown trick-or-treating and getting a rock in his bag, and saying, "I got a rock," but Mom didn't catch the media reference.
* * *
Needless to say, there was much merchandise from Fry's:
• From me to Dad: a wall calendar with pictures of different model train sets for every month
• From Abe to Susan: Copy of Quicken, the oddly religious personal/financial software program that has no option for roommates or other non-Cold War era sex/space-sharing alliances.
• From Susan to Todd: SIMMs (Macintosh memory modules: Single Inline Memory Modules)
• From everyone to everyone: Video and audio cables
• From Michael to Dad: an old-fashioned red Craftsman tool chest
• From Santa to all of us in our stockings: diet Cokes, Hostess products, blank video tapes, and batteries!
* * *
Of course: minivan-loads of Star Trekiana -
• three British import CDs of William Shatner karaokeing "Mr. Tamborine Man" (famous career mistake #487) as well as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
• Starlog magazine subscriptions
• bootleg galley proofs of the upcoming Gene Rodenberry biography
• Next Generation mouse pads
• photo glossies of Data, Riker, Deanna Troi, and Wesley from Star Trek: The Next Generation
• a plastic Starship Enterprise Control Center as well as a Franklin Mint Starship Enterprise replica
• a Deep Space Nine yo-yo, but no one has really clicked into Deep Space Nine yet, s
o it wasn't popular and sat on the coffee table
* * *
Overheard: "It got rated four-and-a-half mice by MacUser!"
* * *
Mom made a turkey for dinner, and wore pearls and hammed it up as a TV mom. We all ate together in the "formal" dining room. Christmas is traditionally a bigger deal in our house, but we all see each other so much, it was no big deal being together. We talked about Macs and product.
In the background the TV set was playing a Wheel of Fortune rerun, and was making a ding-ding-ding sound. Mom asked, "What's that noise," and Susan said, "Someone just bought a vowel."
Then the BIG surprise was that ABE appeared! Like something from a Disney movie, right in the middle of dinner, in a white rental car, laden with Sony products, bottles o' booze, and a big box with a spectacular bow on top for Bug - a paper shredder from a surplus store. Bug was positively sniffling with gratitude ("It's the nicest present anybody's ever given me!") He spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping newspapers and lighting flash bombs of the shredded remnants in the fireplace, ridding the Habitrail of several months and stratum of bedding material, and it looked quite presentable at the end of it.
After dinner we forced Abe into the van and drove him to 7-Eleven to buy him more Christmas presents, so he ended up with copies of People, microwaved cheeseburgers, Reese's Pieces, and string as gifts. I realized how much I liked Abe, but I wonder if I'd ever have recognized that if I had kept living in the group house. I think our e-mail correspondence has given us an intimacy that face-to-face contact never would have. Irony!
* * *
I almost made Dad a cardboard sign saying, "will manage for food" but then I felt like a bad, bad son, and then, like clockwork, I got to feeling depressed for fifty something's, imagining them standing at the corner of El Camino Real and Rengstorff Avenue holding up such a sign. And I can't believe Michael got Dad a nice tool kit for Christmas. How fucking thoughtful.
SUNDAY
December 26,1993
All family'ed out.