Author: Joey deVilla

While I don’t want this to become the “All New Girl, All The Time” weblog, I should let you know that the darkly funny web site, Capital of Nasty, is now running the New Girl story. Thanks, Leandro!

I remember attending Clay Shirky’s talk about LiveJournal at last year’s O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I wasn’t particularly interested in the topic; I’d just ducked in there to avoid John “Captain Crunch” Draper, who’d been hounding me throughout the entire conference to help him do some “energy transfer work” in my room. Eager to avoid a tear-filled session where I’d have to play-act the “bad touch” incident at a therapist’s with anatomically-correct dolls, I thought I’d go see what insights Clay had come up with in his months of LiveJournal research.

(A friend later said: “If you’d been in the hacker community as long as I have, you’d have known that Crunch was a creepy gay old man,” to which I replied “If you’d been in the having-a-life community as long as I have, you’d be able to figure it out pretty quickly.” Nerd.)

At some point, Clay was talking about the kind of stuff that people typically wrote in their LiveJournals and I quipped to someone beside me: “LJ people. Yeesh.”

If the New Girl Situation is some kind of karmic payback for the LiveJournal dis, I would like to ask the cosmos: “I think my account’s all settled, don’t you?”

If you’ve been reading the comments from the New Girl story, you’ve probably seen comments from Mean One, someone who’d been burned by New Girl far worse than I was. She’s created a LiveJournal just to tell her own New Girl story.

I didn’t know there was a blog that chronicled LiveJournal drama, but such a beast exists: LJdrama.org. Naturally, the New Girl drama did not escape their notice.

…UFies, being those who read the geek-culture comic strip User Friendly. The New Girl story is their Link of the Day, so I thought I’d say hi to them with these Dust Puppy-related photos from LinuxWorld Expo NYC 2000:

In my browser, I keep a folder called “For the Blog” where I stuff all kinds of interesting bookmarks. It’s been getting quite full over the past month, and especially over the past ten days where the entries have been “All New Girl, all the time”. Along with some New Girl-related stuff, here are those aforementioned interesting things…

Breakin’ 2 — finally on DVD!

While the original Breakin’ movie was simply about breakin’ into breakin’ (the IMDB summary for the movie is “Girl is a waitress by day, a breakdancer by night”), Breakin’ 2 attempted to become a more “issues”-oriented movie by focusing its plot on the impending demolition of a community centre by the mandatory villain: the Evil Older White Guy Without a Shred of Funk Whatsoever. At the movie’s climax, the bulldozers — which take up the entire width of the street by driving in menacing formation — approach the community centre and only the scrappy crew of breakdancers can stop them. Along with a very young, very skinny Ice-T (listed in the credits of Breakin’ as “Rap Talker” and in Breakin’ 2 as “Rapper”), they put on a performance complete with hardcore poppin’ and lockin’ to stop the ‘dozers in their tracks. When the Evil White Guy orders the bulldozers to push through them, the drivers refuse, saying they’re not going to flatten a bunch of kids, especially talented ones! (Yeah, I know — in the post-Rachel Corrie age, it sounds even more contrived.)

Someone bring in Richard Dawkins — he’s a material witness!

At least one person out there believes that the true roots of terrorism are Darwinism and Materialism.

We’re in the big league now

At long last, Accordion City has finally got its own Craigslist. Let the job-seeking, event-announcing, stuff-selling and funny personal ads commence!

Right now, it doesn’t have many postings and doesn’t look like much. To see what it could become, check out the original (San Francisco Bay Area) as well as the New York one.

And finally, the New Girl update

I always save the interesting stuff for last.

Reliable sources indicate that New Girl last crashed on the couch of an old buddy from Cocaine Anonymous for three or four days and then got kicked out. (I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Cocaine Anonymous.) The word about her is going around town pretty quickly and I think the number of places where she can crash is dwindling rapidly. When this sort of thing happens, I’m told she relies on an unusual trick: checking herself into a psych ward at a local hospital, treating it as if it were a youth hostel that’s cleaner, if quirkier. I’m also told that she learned how to put on a convincing “unbalanced” act by using a paperback copy of Girl, Interrupted as a guide.

Memo to self: get introduced to women by friends with better “people radar” (admittedly, this one slipped under mine, which is usually pretty sharp). I was introduced to her by a former web guy for the Backstreet Boys, who later worked for the McDonalds web team. Simply put, the man makes a living bringing evil and misery into the world. You think he’d leave his work at the office, but nooooooooo…

The girl formerly known as my worst girlfriend ever (she’s now in second place — her performance was very good, but New Girl blew her away) offers her condolences. It’s kind of like being Batman and getting a phone call from The Penguin: “Hey dude, I just heard about the Joker thing, and I just called to say I’m sorry that it happened to you…”

The e-mail that got the ball rolling. Whistleblower has a LiveJournal set up just for New Girl-related stuff. The latest entry contains the full text of the email alerting me that everything I knew about New Girl was wrong.

Other people’s experiences with New Girl. Someone who’s had run-ins with her recently (complete with extremely unflattering photos — really, she looks better these days), and someone else who’s known her for much longer have very interesting stories to tell. After reading these, I think I’m going to sit in a tub of Lysol for a week.

And finally, a chance to get philosophical. A number of people have commented or emailed me, telling me that they hoped that my experience hasn’t turned me off dating completely. Not at all, and rather than explain why, I’ll leave it to AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, who sums my attitude up pretty nicely:

I’ve always found that it works to put your best foot forward and don’t be afraid. I suppose it’s a bit like swimming. You can’t just dip your little toe in the water. You’ve got to go all the way. I believe you’ve got nothing to fear, although a lot of people think that’s strange. If you hit a bum note, that was fate. Some of those bum notes might be a great accident. I think that if you’re too tight and restricted, then those sort of little spontaneous things just seem to give it that little bit of magic, they won’t happen. Every now and again, we all hit a bum note. The ideal situation is just to hit less of them! I think that it just takes a bit of confidence when you’re doing something. I’ve never been afraid.

As their song goes, I’ve got big balls.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m back from the blogging vacation and ready to par-tay. I’ve got lots of work, so today’s entries will be popping up throughout the day.

I’d like to thank everyone who left a message in the comments section (there were at least 150 — a record for this site, and a number normally not seen even in the “A-list” blogs!) and everyone who linked to me (according to blog-linkage-tracking site Technorati, all 338 of you!). I appeciated it.

As for how I’m doing, I’ll let AC/DC do the talking for me:

Still one of the best bands ever. Brian Johnson and Angus Young of the almighty AC/DC. And what better song to quote?

Back in black

I hit the sack

I’ve been too long I’m glad to be back [I bet you know I’m…]

Yes, I’m let loose

From the noose

That’s kept me hanging about

I’ve been looking at the sky

‘Cause it’s gettin’ me high

Forget the hearse ’cause I never die

I got nine lives

Cat’s Eyes

Abusin’ every one of them and running wild

‘Cause I’m back

Yes, I’m back

Well, I’m back

Yes, I’m back

Well, I’m ba-a-a-a-ack, ba-a-a-a-ack

(Well) I’m back in black

Yes, I’m back in black

Back in the back

Of a Cadillac

Number one with a bullet, I’m a power pack

Yes, I’m in a bang

With a gang

They’ve got to catch me if they want me to hang

Cause I’m back on the track

And I’m beatin’ the flack

Nobody’s gonna get me on another rap

So look at me now

I’m just makin’ my play

Don’t try to push your luck, just get out of my way

Well, I’m back

Yes I’m back

Well, I’m back

Yes I’m back

Well, I’m ba-a-a-a-ack, ba-a-a-a-ack

Well I’m back in black

Yes I’m back in black

As I said earlier, more postings throughout the day.

For the record, here’s the posting that got noticed by Whistleblower and started the whole New Girl brouhaha, with New Girl’s name and the photo removed.

(For extra-special fun, check out this Google search on the phrase “blogs save lives”.)

I promise that this will be one of the few gushy-sickly-sweet postings you’ll ever see in this blog. In seventeen months of blogging, I’m entitled to one such post. Bear with me, willya?

Top Ten Things About New Girl

10. She insists she’s not a goth. She wears mostly black (“But I wear pink too!” she says). She has a lot of PVC clothing. She likes EBM, darkwave and synthpop music (she helped do the promotions for Synthpop Goes The World last year). She has a credit on the alt.goth.fashion FAQ. All the bar staff at the goth bars in town know her.

But nooooo, she insists she’s not a goth. Nope. Nu-uh.

Riiiiiiight.

9. She looooves videogames. For her 16th birthday, she asked for a Super Nintendo, and she’s the proud owner of a PlayStation 2 (yay, because I don’t own one). She can probably mop the floor with me in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. While watching TV the other day, we saw the ad for the new ninja game and turned to me and said “we have got to rent that one.”

As for PC-based games, I got her hooked on Freedom Force, and she now curses at my computer whenever El Diablo’s aim is off (that’s why I call him “El Asso Wipe-o”, dear…)

8. She looooves meat, especially hamburgers. She doesn’t trust vegetarians or vegans (“Eat an animal, wuss”). She has a $150 gift certificate for The Keg, and we’re going to be ordering like this: “Just shave the fur, saw off the horns, wipe its ass and put it on a plate!”

Okay, maybe we won’t be like that, but she thought that line was funny.

7. She’s a Montreal Girl. Montreal Girls, especially those who hung out at Les Foufounes Electriques (a great club — the name literally translates as “The Electric Buttocks”) and the Bar Formerly Known As La Nausee (“Nausea” — cheap beer, great music, just don’t use the can), are cooler than the other side of the pillow. (For those of you familiar with this lovely city, she’s a Traf girl.)

6. She loves cartoons. She can quote The Simpsons and Invader Zim (which is hard to come by up here in Soviet Canuckistan), knows what line of business Hank Hill is in and loves anime too.

She’s also a Hello Kitty fiend. I’ll have to get her the Hello Kitty Tarot card deck for her birthday.

5. She’s a geek’s dream date. She’s a programmer with a computer engineering degree from UBC. Just the kind of girl that Roast Beef from Achewood would appreciate:

As a matter of fact, she does have a strong Java/C++ background. PHP is her thing; she’s the webmistress at Alliance Atlantis. Free movie passes, whoo-hoo!

4. She looooves going out clubbing, drinking and dancing and hanging out at home with our computers. “Joey, I wanna go to Velvet tonight!” “Joey, I wanna learn OpenGL programming!” We’re going to get along just fine.

3. She has a Yamaha synth dork guitar-style keyboard like I do! Long before I became the Accordion Guy, I was the Synth Dork. Having spent my teenage years in the eighties and watching too many Howard Jones videos, I didn’t want to be trapped behind a stack of keyboards like Keith Emerson, so I got into playing on those keyboards that you could wear just like guitars (like the second guy from the left in this photo). If you’re going to play the uncoolest instrument, you should do it in the uncoolest way possible. I still am the proud owner of a wedge-shaped Yamaha SHS-200.

It turns out that New Girl, synthpop fiend that she is, has the smaller version of my keyboard, the Yamaha SHS-10 (here’s a picture of the beast)

You realise, of course, that we’re taking the dork keyboards out on the street this summer.

2. She’s baking a pie tonight! Better yet, she used the Eric Cartman quote about pie before I could.

1. She’s cute. Spanktastically so.

Number one with a bullet! The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century has managed to top Blogdex, Popdex and Daypop (a pretty strong showing on Technorati, too). A lot of blogs have been pointed to The Girl Who Cried “Webmaster”, and some of their authors are under the mistaken impression that it’s a cautionary tale about the danger of online “dating”.

I’ve made it clear that I met New Girl in the real world — not online — in the comments for that blog entry and would’ve left it at that except for the fact that someone pointed me to a comment made in the comments section of another blog, and it got my dander up:

Bah! This guy is just crying [more like whining] now cuz he won’t get to have *sex* with a “hot” chick he met online. Boo hoo! Cry me a river n’ give the guy a telethon. I say more femme dupers – less shallow online horndogs!!

Online? Guilty as charged. I have a blog. But really, I’m very much a citzen of the real world. The Fresh Prince of Meatspace, if you will.

Horndog? Sometimes. I am after all, male.

But shallow? “More femme dupers”? I suspect the commenter’s got some unresolved issues and lingering bitterness.

Normally I wouldn’t give a crap, but let’s just say that my Zen isn’t at its usual level these days.

Allow me to state for the record:

I met New Girl in real life.

Sorry to ruin your schadenfreude, honey.

We met at the neighbourhood cafe, Tequila Bookworm. I was introduced to her by friends, one of whom I’ve known for over a decade. Two of these friends are Web programmers, and both were convinced that new Girl was a webmaster and developer at Alliance Atlantis. One of these friends had a friend who went out with her for a short while, and this friend-of-a-friend had no idea of what she really was like. She used enough tech and gamer talk to have us convinced.

If only it were traditional to invite girls to do some pair programming rather than dancing. I might’ve seen through her act.

As AKMA astutely observed, it was a reversal of what you’d expect: the danger came from real life and salvation came from the online world.

This is precisely why I don’t try to “pick up” (or for my British friends, “pull”) online: there’s just too much miscommunication possible. You don’t have those subtle nuances like facial expressions, body language and what they call “chemistry” and all the other goodies that come from real life. The anonymity of medium makes it that much easier to pretend to be something you’re not. And yes, we’ve had con artists and scammers around long before we had the Internet.

Once again, thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent me email. Barring anything else that gets my dander up and makes me write another blog entry, I’ll see you folks on Monday.