February 5, 2001: Happy days and horrific roommates
The weather is a sunny 74 degrees and the sunsets have been beautiful lately. Living on the island is like being on vacation somewhere exotic without having to convert currency or read a guidebook. The rolling blackouts haven't hit yet either, which is nice. California, once the cutting edge of world technology, is now toying with a return to the dark ages. Oregon, you're our only hope. The force is strong with you.

A reminder to 'expect rolling power outages' has been up on the clunky old electromechanical signboard by the island's gate. It normally just reads out 'welcome to treasure island' over and over again. It's a bit difficult to make out for sure, as about half of the old digital sign displays shaky gibberish, like it's already gone through some sort of electronic stroke before while in the hands of navy experimenters. There was some comment made at an island community meeting that the old sign can't be fixed, as the last replacement parts to fix it were destroyed in the 1986 challenger explosion.

Say, do you remember where you were when you first heard that nasa had blown up a space shuttle in a desperate bid to re-spark america's interest in space for the first time since 1969? I do. I think the actual question is supposed to be 'what were you doing when you heard kennedy was shot?" but 'kennedy' makes my generation think of the mtv veejay, not some black and white president on grainy 8mm film. Even vietnam doesn't reach any deep inner-conscious meaning for me. It just reminds me of homeless people who suffer from flashbacks.

Occasionally I have my own nam-style flashbacks, but they don't feature blood and murder and agent orange, they're mostly about former roommates or bad airline service. Not that they're not traumatic in their own way. Recalling the ordeal related to some old roommates can nearly bring me to tears.

Like one guy, who I'll call jusg3, who moved in and ended up taking everything he couldn't break or thoroughly defile. He managed to total my car on a joyride, and then refused to return the bits of it that were left. I had to verify the remains of my car using dna testing to be sure that it really belonged to a vehicle that was once mine.

Some roommates just steal your clothes or leave their underwear on the bathroom floor. This guy would steal my underwear and rough it up before leaving it on the floor. I got so accustomed to dealing with psycho roommates that it actually freaked me out the first time nick emptied the dishwasher. I thought I had a suffered a severe missing memory episode and would have to spend the rest of my life on the alien talk show and book club circuit.

I empty the dishwasher at work, too, so opening a washer and seeing anything except lots of dishes to load or unload is on the level of witnessing a solar eclipse. This will take some getting used to.

I'm investigating amihotornot-style technology to rank articles, so readers can vote on what articles they liked. Over the weekend there was a surge of new visitors to the site, which was cool. We celebrated by watching the simpsons. Like a deer in the headlights, I kept watching what came on next, first malcolm in the middle and then the x-files, both of which were too retarded to even describe. Has network television got worse, or have I just realized that television in general is insipidly stupid after a long hiatus from watching?

In any case, there's no need to waste time with the tube as the city and island have lots to check out and document. We're thinking of getting a cheap old sailboat and we're completing the last production work on some new film projects, so don't be a stranger. Come back early and often. Let us know what you think of the site and you could win a cool t-shirt (and possibly some matching jusg3 underwear).

More information about excitement, mistakes, kennedy and sailing: