Finished reading Bill Bryson’s I’m

Smokler on March 6, 2002

Finished reading Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself my first afternoon in Austin. It’s a collection of newspaper columns did right after moving back to America after two decades of living in the U.K. The subject matter’s rather uninspired (New England winters, inscrutable forms from the IRS) but Bryson manages to give each of them his own askewing. I didn’t crack up the way I did reading The Lost Continent but I tittered the whole time. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The book had served as my toilet book back home and I read one piece at a time while other business went on. I brought it along in case I tired of the workish books I had brought. But I’m on vacation and I read what suits me in the moment. So Bill Bryson followed me to lunch, the grocery store and to a beat-up chair at Bookpeople, a super-duper independent bookstore. I read the last essay while eyeing a towering shelf of Western Novelists, mostly unseen in the Republic of San Francisco. I haven’t read any myself but a fellow named Elmer Kelton has written about 113 of them, each with a cover so full of horses and mountainous beauty that they look like they’re ready to gallop off the shelf at any moment.

I just heard that Dave

Smokler on March 1, 2002

I just heard that Dave Eggers’s older sister Beth had committed suicide last November. The two had publicly disagreed over how Egger’s had portrayed her role in raising their youngest brother Toph after the Eggers children were orphaned, in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Straggering Genius. But I don’t think that’s why it happened.

Man, that is so sad. I haven’t always agreed with how Dave Eggers handled his sudden surge of fame but he is a colleague in this wacky business, a friend-of-a-friend, a fellow San Franciscan and a human being. And I don’t wish that kind of heartbreak on anybody.

Just got back from my

Smokler on February 24, 2002

Just got back from my friend Laura’s “Housecooling Party” (she just moved. Opposite of housewarming. Get it?) and am totally freaking out about my move. Nothing works in my apartment, I’m sleeping on the living room floor after breaking my bed (more on that some other time), none of the phones in my house work and my DSL is handled by the biggest gang of idiots since Mad Magazine. Live is slipping into a gooey mess and I just realized SXSW is next week. Where have I been?

I originally thought I was going to be able to move the last two weeks in March but the way I feel right now, that is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. I don’t want to write. I’m so angry at myself right now that I’m about one blog away from tossing most of my furniture from the roof.

Excuse me….

Visit Chickclick’s hompage now and

Smokler on February 22, 2002

Visit Chickclick’s hompage now and then cry. It looks like the place has been robbed. I may not be a 16-year-old girl but I got my start in online communities at several CC affiliate sites, most of which are gone now. ChickClick’s affiliate program used to number about 30 strong, mostly independent content sites run by one overworked person and a lot of exploited friends. Adds from Mama Chickclick allowed these sites to have a litle money, to survive without driving their creators insane. I was about to become one of those people so I learned a lot from them.

How things have changed. My friend Britton used to work for Snowball, Chickclick’s parent company, and told me the site had been gutted and sold for scrap. I think I would have been happier if there had just been a “We’re Closed” page up like the one I also saw at Switchhouse this morning instead of this shadow of its former self.