Davison online
The life and times of the world’s
most self-deluded online superstar
News & Commentary
Winning Gold
My home town of Salem, Oregon holds citywide relay races for elementary school kids every spring. For years they were known as the JC Relays. In more recent years, they've been sponsored by Countrywide Insurance, so they've been rebranded the Countrywide Kids Relays. (They'll always be the JC Relays to me.) It's a competitive affair in the sense that...
Customer No Service
Hey, guess what happens to your Alaska Air miles if you don't use them within two years? If you said they boot you out of their mileage program and charge a $75 reinstatement fee, you're right. (Supposedly they sent warnings, but I never received them—though their promotional emails continue to hit my InBox just fine.) With the phone representative, the...
Thoreau
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. —Thoreau
An Agnostic Appreciation of The Book of Genesis
In particular, I found Section 3 of Mark O'Connell's essay to be brilliant. The message seems to be this: we could have been more than merely human, but we blew it, and it’s sex that’s to blame for our blowing it; it’s sex that’s to blame for our Fall into human wretchedness and mortality. Our Fall, in other words, into...
EFF Gets It Wrong
I like the Electronic Frontier Foundation generally. They're sort of an online ACLU, and while they tend toward the strident, civil liberties in this day and age need that type of advocacy more than ever. I've supported them financially in the past, and I expect I will in the future as well. But it drives me crazy when they get stuff wrong, as I believe...
Jennifer Thieret Westermeyer
I met Jennifer Thieret Westermeyer at the Nice, France train station in the summer of 1990. She was on a train in, I was departing. We spoke for 5 minutes, then it was time for me to board. We promised to write. We did, and over the years our correspondence tracked the changes of our lives. She married in '92 and divorced in '93. Graduated law school in...
Salvador Reyes
I met Sal Reyes when I was 12 or 13, and he became instantly the best soccer player I knew. My first glimpse of him was at tryouts for a Salem-area U-15 select team. He was doing rainbows one after another at a full run. I remember thinking that if the rest of the squad were this good, I didn't have a chance. Of rainbows I could do exactly one in a row,...
Secretariat
We'll start with the positives: Diane Lane is gorgeous, and it helps considerably that she's in virtually every scene. The film is well-acted. It's based on a true story. Secretariat is arguably the best race horse ever. Um...I'm running dry here. Unfortunately: This is not so much the story of Secretariat as it is the story of Secretariat's owner. Since...
PVP continues to slide
I've written at length about the dismaying slide of Scott Kurtz' PVP, my one-time favorite web comic. I'm not a daily reader any more—I could no more handle the plummeting there than I could watch Matrix Reloaded again. I check in every once in awhile, though, just to see if perhaps Kurtz has returned to his senses. He did, after all, publish literally...
The Death of Osama bin Laden
Is it wrong to celebrate the death of an enemy? I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love...
Essays
One Tin Soldier
An interview with the interesting and elusive Ty Davison. Conducted by Ty Davison. Edited by Ty Davison. A blunt blow with a heavy object. A spiritual review of capitalism. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. Too much monkey business. An interview with Ty Davison This interview was conducted on April 21-22, 1998 under bizarre circumstances. For whatever reason, Davison felt compelled to veil our meetings in a cloud of secrecy, insisting that I double back on my...
Paula, Paula, Paula…
Keeping up with the Joneses. An open letter to the woman who, like Betsy Ross or Eleanor Roosevelt, has done so much for this country. With her court case now deservedly thrown out, she may not get rich, but she'll always have her reputation. April 17, 1998 Dear Paula: Thanks for your on-going political soap opera of the last few years. It's really been a hoot. Trailerpark entertainment at its best, up there with Jerry Springer and Monster Trucks, I assure you. Get a nose...
Virtual PC 2.0: My 486 is Out of a Job
New emulator happily and easily opens the Pandora's Box of Windows 95 for Apple Power Mac users. Now your Mac can have page faults, general protection errors and blue screens of death just like a real PC! Two steps forward, one step back in the Dance of Life. (This review also appears on Mike Breeden's excellent Accelerate Your Mac!.) Connectix' Virtual PC 2.0, the $150 software-based emulator of an Intel PC, offers Apple Power Macintosh owners a chance to run all the...
Galaxians: Arcade Game for the Ages
Nothing like an arcade emulator and the re-discovery of a favorite video game to make one feel young again. Cheaper than plastic surgery, too. I know that many of you—though not that many perhaps (which must say something about who my friends are)—will think me a touch mad for rediscovering in recent days an old arcade game called "Galaxians" and seeing this as a kind of right of passage into adulthood. (Of course at age 29 it's about time for adulthood, isn't it?) In...