i love this american life from NPR. i heard this excellent story about amerigo vespucci, from which we get america. very funny. also a story about a guy who does murals in chicago housing project for folks.

"Doing well" is meaningless in the midst of depression. It often seems that depression expands the mind. Understanding the big picture, all of the items that are part of the flow of existence, both enlightens and reminds one that nothing ... NOTHING really matters.

Kan had an amazing understanding of the interconnections in the world. As a perfect example, his discussion on of the implications of the Euro spreading east is insightful and fascinating and great. He really seemed to understand big interactions ... but I'll bet it only made him feel more useless.

Gnutella is all about interconnections of folks. But the nature of the disease is that you donut understand that *you* are also connected, and your contribution is worthwhile. Unfortunately, Gene Kan died completely alone, in his mind.

Requiem Aeternam,

Goyo

At 11:55 AM 7/11/2002, you wrote:

i hate to be sending traffic to msnbc, but here it is:



"SAN FRANCISCO, July 10 — Gene Kan, one of the key programmers behind
the popular file-sharing technology known as Gnutella, has died in an
apparent suicide, officials said Tuesday. He was 25. "

i noticed the story mainly because the guy is my age, and was, by all
counts, 'doing well' in the world. yet still he viewed himself as a
failure and took his own life.

i found a tiny memorial (http://www.xcflabs.com/~yaroslav/gene/) with a
link to his blog:

http://thisplacesucks.blogspot.com/

the item on 12.06.02 made me laugh.

do you know the way to san jose?

toot-toot. at beneficial. you're good for more. toot-toot.

i used to know this guy named greg. we played dungeons and dragons together, that's how we met through our mutal friend jody. they were both bug guys in the bio department. greg and i were both into the internet, this we like 1994, so things were pretty exciting then. we both grew marijuana and traded cuttings and secrets. i went to a holloween party of his, mostly biology folks and they all dressed up as various creatures. one guy came in with a oblong semi-circle shell on his back. no one was quite sure what it was, so he leaned up against the fridge, as if he were stuck now to the door, and said, "i'm a zebra muscle." everyone laughed, i said "nice." you had to have lived in the great lakes region, i guess. greg was also big into back-packing and canoeing. so one week, we decided to find the source of the milwaukee river and follow it down as far as we could go towards lake michigan.

are you loquo?

the sculpture exhibit is actually pretty cool. a metal sculptor for the most part, he dabbles in found object, interactive, mostly gadget oriented art as well (meta name="keyword" content="Montcada5.com, montcada, Barcelona's art, electronic and kinetic art, Internet operated machines, Internet controlled appliances"). hanging from the balconies around the court yard are enormous metal finger prints. i hear the tio next to me tell his girlfriend that the artist will make custom works of your own finger print. not sure how i'd feel about an enormous replica of my fingerprint, available for anyone to photograph and use for nefarous purposes, just like in sleeper. remember that movie? it was a beauty eh.

there's a homeless woman who lives in front of el corte inglés in plaça d'angels. she sleeps there, eats there, grooms her long grey hair there. people give her food and once i saw someone try to give her a bocadillo but she was asleep laying on her back, so the other woman kind of walked off, unsure what to do. but another time i saw that someone had left her a plastic carton of pasta as she slept. that was nice. it looked good too. hmmmm. street pasta. she doesn't necesarily beg for anything, people just kind of give her stuff. not that that's enough in any right, she deserves more, more than she's been offered by a system of government and commerce that allows some one like her--or that guy i saw this evening coming back from the shwarma place on carrer tallers, that asian guy dragging his mangled cardboard bed behind him, barely the strength to lift it off the ground, his plastic bag of posessions wrapped around his other fist--a system that allows people like them to live without a home, still, i don't know if i have the strength to see her everday. that guy touched me tonight profoundly, pero profundamente. my mind cried for him, and my soul embraced him. i wanted to give him my shwarma and coke, you need it more than me. i wanted to open a shelter where you'd have a place to sleep, wash, eat. but you can't come high or drunk, or gramma'll kick you out on your ears. and then i walked past the SIDA awareness reception in the courtyard of the casa de la caritat and completely forgot about him until now. i walked into the reception earlier on, on my way to the score the shwarma, only because i heard someone speaking in english over a loud speaker. he was austrian. i realized it was a SIDA event, looked around for a red ribbon to put on, and found my way over to the spread of wine, cheese, jamon, assorted nuts scattered casually about on the white cloth. i didn't speak to anyone, contenting myself with pretending to enjoy the sculpture exhibit while simultaneous scoping out the crowd. i recognize one guy. i've seen him at platja nova. it's the safest beach in the city. i almost didn't recognize him with clothes on. i notice a rubin with long klingon curls. i'm not confident enough to approach her considering the odds in this crowd. although, that's not a bad way to get rejected. it says nothing about you. and straight women use it as well.