Microserfs

It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out - something more "user friendly."

* * *

Ethan got through to his parents on a cellular phone around sunset; he learned they were having the grandest of times, barbecuing burgers and corn on the front lawn, and meeting their neighbors for the first time in years. "Mom said the Ronald Reagan Library was untouched. Like I care."

I think he wanted more drama. I think he would have been happier to hear that his mother was pinioned beneath a collapsed chimney, trickling blood into the phone receiver held up to her ear by his father.

* * *

Todd didn't come to the party. He was out on an actual, real, genuine, not-fake, date-style DATE tonight.

* * *

I'm coming to the conclusion about the human subconscious . . . that, no matter how you look at it, machines really are our subconscious. I mean, people from outer space didn't come down to earth and make machines for us . . . we made them ourselves. So machines can only be products of our being, and as such, windows into our souls . . . by monitoring the machines we build, and the sorts of things we put into them, we have this amazingly direct litmus as to how we are evolving.

* * *

Champaign-Urbana

Her parents are engineers but that wasn't enough to keep them together.

Pull the wires from the wall

Chelyabinsk-70

TUESDAY

Shake-up: Todd has begun seeing a female body builder named Dusty, so I guess Armageddon can only be a little ways away. And here's the freaky part - Dusty codes! She's done systems for Esprit and Smith & Hawken. But she's the uncodiest female I've ever met.

"We met at the protein drink sales case at Gold's Gym," beamed Todd, showcasing Dusty, who emerged into our office like a Close Encounter of the Third Kind. "Dusty," Todd called, "strike the pose!" From offstage a ghetto blaster pumped out thwomping lipstick-commercial Eurodisco.

Dusty - late twenties or early thirties, with titanium hamstrings (and perhaps too much time spent in tanning booths) in ragged fringed hotpants and a ripped T-shirt commenced vogueing official International Bodybuilding Federation poses. We gaped openly. Such brazen posing!

Dusty then grabbed Misty, who Mom brought downtown and then promptly left with us while she did some shopping, and twirled her by the paws in circles above our office's Lego garden. All that was missing were popping flash bulbs and a smoke machine, and Misty, unused to being picked up in such a manner, was blissed and became Dusty's instant lifelong fan.

Dusty put down the now-dizzy Misty and said, "Yeah . . ." in a Chesterfields-smoked-through-a-tracheotomy-slit voice (Dusty gets her voice from barking out aerobics commands, which, Todd informs us, she teaches) ". . . all those big plastic tubs of branch-chain protein growth formula with gold lettering - Toddy and me were fighting for the last container of MetMax."

Their eyes met and they squeezed each other's hands - it's a good thing they like each other, because otherwise it would be like two monster trucks chewing each other up at the KingDome.

* * *

Karla and Susan were being catty about Dusty:

Karla: "Dusty - sounds like the name of someone who rides in a radio station traffic news-copter."

Susan: "She looks like she just escaped from an Ice-Follies Smurfs-on-Ice mall show - tousled mall hair, spandex, and perky perma-smile."

Michael closed his door. He doesn't like this side of human nature, but later Karla said it's because he's attracted to super-strong women. "Trust me," she said. "I can tell these things.''

* * *

Ethan is building a Lego freeway cloverleaf. Once it's finished, he's going to smash it and repair it. He's been horrified by the Northridge quake in Los Angeles. He's indeed a Valley boy.

At a Canon photocopy shop he enlarged a news wire photo of the collapsed Antelope Valley freeway to up to wall-sized and hung it in the office as a model to build from. I suppose he should have used the money to pay his CABLE BILL, but Karla thinks he likes to have an excuse to visit us more at the office.

Michael wisely allows no cable in the office and has forbidden us from playing Melrose Place and hockey fight dubs on the office VCR unit.

Ethan has already demolished the Wilshire Modernist block of the Palo Alto City Hall Dad constructed.

"Reconstruction is part of the plan," said Ethan, and Dad, although miffed, took pity on Ethan and decided not to get huffy.

* * *

We LOVE our new office and we no longer have to worry about rubbing our fingers on surfaces and finding accumulations of Ethan's dead scalp particles. Dad has a Dustbuster mounted on the wall. We also have SPACE.

* * *

Nobody scored last night. Susan got Phil's phone number and Bug got the PF Magic guy's number, even though he's not sure if he's straight or not. The 1990s!

Susan was a bit sheepish around me and Karla, because she knows Phil is a loser, and she knows that we know.