That which springs eternal
A stunted, grimy doglight of hope poked its bedraggled head into the cavernous warehouse of anxiety that is my professional life. With only a couple days to solve the searchable-database problems plaguing my current website project, I managed to cobble together enough downloaded gimmickry and dumb luck to possibly do the job. If this last-ditch effort isn't up to the task, I'll be obliged to call my client to give them some bad news, and then commit ritual suicide by whacking myself repeatedly over the head with my keyboard.
In the meantime, my brain seems to feed on the chemicals produced during extended panic. This is not the kind of primitive panic experienced as one drives a car into a guardrail, or gets mugged by gun-toting ruffians, or confronts a diagnosis of terminal illness, or attends a school dance at age 13. This is a late-twentieth-century panic, the kind engendered when you have just taken your client's entire e-mail system offline for a day. As I have just done. Or when you have advised a client to buy an expensive piece of software to run the online database, which you then abandoned late in the website development process and will now offer to buy back from your client as a gesture of not-making-enemies. As I am about to do.
This kind of focused, prolonged anxiety is like a psychological oven in which a rich and delicious batch of chemical cookies is baking for me. My ability to ingest and utilize quanta of new information has temporarily ratcheted up several notches, along with my tendency to carelessly disregard or forget items that don't directly affect the task at hand. Susan has become so irritated at my forgetfulness that she's started leaving little post-it notes on my computer: memory prosthetics. Meanwhile, all my attention that might otherwise have squandered on everyday tasks has been redirected into the singularity of getting the website up. It's much like the way the body shunts blood into the head and trunk when the environment becomes too cold to sustain the entire body.
Two Down
Astonishingly, I received an actual e-mail from a reader in reference to my "Cheeks 'n' Chins Challenge" game. As you may recall, this is an idea for an online game that I am currently flogging nearly to death. It will invite viewers to match a particular image of someone's ass to the corresponding image of that person's chin. I honestly think it will be one of the most fun things you have ever done with someone else's ass, and I know that says a lot. After I first mentioned the game, one reader wrote me to ask about the technical specs for sending in pictures. I responded that I didn't want to get a lot of snipped-up pics from skin sites: my criterion was that if the subject might actually read the website and was not otherwise illegal, they could participate. Two days later, two chins and three asses (one extra, just in case) arrived in my mailbox, seeming like the real thing. How exciting! They were even rather nicely-formed asses; if I possessed an ass like that I'd probably want the world to see it, too.
Actually, I'm fascinated by the motivation of people who would, in good faith, send me pictures of their posteriors. I'm tempted to e-mail them with all sorts of questions about how and why they decided to send them, but I'm concerned that they would perceive my curiosity as the markings of a psycho. The temptation to reveal yourself to strangers bears a measure of titillation for many folk, including me -- hence the online journal. The Internet has empowered loads of people to explore the more idiosyncratic corners of their sexuality and/or exhibitionism. I'm reluctant to admit being piqued by naughty pictures sent in from strangers, but, of course, I am.
The new images, the foundation for a database of asses and chins, really spurred me into action. On Saturday night I'm going over to Inga and Grover's place, and I'll ask them to let me photograph their asses and chins. I think Inga will either go for it or be scandalized, demonstrating extremism in whatever opinion she chooses. Grover will almost certainly decline quietly. If the whole thing goes forward, at some point I'll have to photograph my own ass too, since it's only fair to put it, as they say, on the line. Online.
In one of the images I received, which was a little too extensively anatomical to utilize without violating privacy, there was a tattoo visible. Another bright idea: a game in which viewers try to match tattoos with... something. Tattoos 'n' Toes. Tattoos 'n' Elbows. Tattoos 'n' Bellybuttons. Tattoos 'n' Shoes. There's an idea in there just dying to get out.