ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND WEBSITES, SOON TO DIE

Did you ever make a website, upon first having the internet, just to have a website? I did. This was much before any every-day-people-blogging came along, and certainly before you could get to know somebody over the internet by searching for a profile. Building a website, for me, was a way to extend your existence (as it still is for many people, of course). And even though I didn't really know what I was going to put on it, I was determined to have one.

Inspired by small independent Canadian rock bands (such as Svelte) to make a space of my own, where I could create my own scene and there was plenty of room, I made a website on Geocities in 2002, three years after they were bought up by Yahoo. If you're so inclined, you can go take a look at the old thing. It's un-cluttered, it's pretty clean. Looking back, it was the launch-pad for a lot of my current e-designing habits: I still love the minimalist white page with black lettering, I still post pictures at the top of articles for no-one in particular, and I still use song-lyrics as headlines.

Anyway, Geocities is closing it's doors on October 26th. I can't fathom why: surely Yahoo can afford to keep a bunch of hokey, old websites standing? According to some Q&A they have posted, the corporation has "decided to focus on helping [their] customers explore and build relationships online in other ways." Of course! Clear away all that self-expressing, amateur crap to make way for a new social-networking revolution, why didn't we consider that in the first place?

I don't know if I can find the right number, but that basically means that a bucket big enough to hold Mars filled with personal websites are going to vanish into thin-air in one month's time. Isn't that fucking sad? Sure, people have the opportunity to save their websites, to download all their old files and HTML layouts and put them up somewhere else, but who is actually going to do that? Nobody has that time. Most people, like me, have embarrassing, modest websites that they don't deem deserving of redemption. But embarrassing, modest things should be preserved, shouldn't they? Yes, one may argue that there are typically non-profit websites like Archive.org that spend time maintaining dusty or done websites, but they won't cover everyone.

Who will preserve our e-History when we're gone?

LET'S MOVE TO THE COUNTRY

It's weird to be back home after six days away on the road. I'm sitting back in my room, looking at all the junk I have around that I truly kid myself into believing I need. It feels to me like everything I needed was in my two bags, or somewhere else in the van. My backpack with 6 shirts, 4 pairs of pants, numerous under-garments and toiletries, while the other housed my books, laptop, camera, Rubix cube and various wires for media transferring. I think I could've lived like that for awhile, but by the end of the trip I was certainly itching to do some laundry.

I've started writing about the tour in spurts, when I remember certain details or how things went about going on. It was a really fun time, and taught me a lot of things about making music, being in a band, and doing it all independently at that. It was definitely a step that had to be taken, and it will be interesting to observe exactly what influences it will have on the four of us as a working whole, creatively and otherwise. It'll probably take me a solid week of writing-- whenever I have time-- to achieve any sort of coherence, to make anything worth reading from an outsider's perspective. But I'll get there.

THE FIRST TOUR

Though I have no doubt any of the places we're going to be this week will be as glamorous as to have dressing rooms such as the Isabel Bader Theatre, I'm ecstatic about the shows ahead. We leave tomorrow around four in the afternoon and probably won't be back until Monday. In that stretch of time, we'll spend about one day sleeping, two hours eating, and nine hours playing music. But we'll also clock in at twenty hours combined driving-time, which will be the core of the tour. The possibilities for how we'll spend that time are limitless.

ANOTHER DREAM

Back in June or July sometime, I had a dream involving a female friend of mine. For privacy reasons, I won't disclose her name. And she's not a close friend of mine, necessarily, though we've had a few fun times together. I remember this dream very vividly, and that's why I'm able to go recite it's moments so acutely. I don't know what it means, and part of me doesn't care. Maybe you can tell me more. We're on my bed, and... well, I guess we're having sex and I'm at her from behind or something. This is a crude but important detail. If you know my room and the way my bed is positioned, you'll see why this point matters.

My window is wide open without a screen. The blinds are retracted completely and the sky, from what I remember, is overcast. At some point I catch something coming closer and closer to the window. Something flying. A tropical parrot comes flying into my room and I catch it between my thumb and index finger. Instead of the bird squishing and subsequently squawking at me, it folds itself like an accordion, so it's as thin as a piece of paper. "Look Tina, it's a parrot," I exclaim at my friend. She just mutters something with a wide smile.

I looked behind her and on the bed were two turkey vultures, cocking their heads back and forth.