July 28, 2004
Ol' Buddy, Ol' Pal
Three decades ago I worked as a machinist at a hash pipe factory. There was a salesman who called on us whose style was to walk up and greet you with "Hi, there, [name blatantly gleaned from patch on shirt], how's it going?" I wouldn't mind still having one of those gimmick pocket knives he passed out, but the only reason we bought industrial chemicals from him was that his company hadn't yet cut my boss off for non-payment.
Steve den Beste just had a run-in with a character trained in the same art. Online, nobody knows if you are a dog, but it isn't that hard for someone who runs his own server to know if you are an avid reader. In the coarse of explaining how he sussed out the would-be publicist's background, he shared what he found. He thought the mere fact that the guy had his website hosted at homepage.mac.com was revealing enough, but I was curious enough to check out what was there. Altho he is from New York City, he has landed in flyover country and he has seen America. With the eye of a true artist, he has captured the ineffable backlit loneliness of being a farm kid showing livestock at the State Fair as only someone who has no notion of life in the real world could.
Posted by triticale at July 28, 2004 09:21 PM