Part Two: Wherein a certain kind of fame is achieved, marriage proposals ensue and a surreal conversation takes place.

“Does Design Matter” was one of the most interesting panels in the lineup. With Zeldman, Joe Clark and Jason Santa Maria on stage, this one promised to be a good one. And it delivered.

Panelists only get their last name printed on the cards in front of them. Someone at the organizing committee obviously had trouble with composite last names, so Jason Santa Maria ended up billed as “Maria”. This set up the mood of the panel. Zeldman bringing Virtual Stan up on the big screen to interrupt Joe Clark sealed the deal.

The high point of this panel (for me) was when Jeffrey Zeldman was talking about accessible, good design and how you can use CSS to provide different styles for your website. And he put Overcaffeinated up as an example.

On the big screen.

For about five minutes.

Let me repeat that: Mr. Web Standards himself put my site up on the screen as an example of good design.

Is Sergio in the house? I know he’s in the conference. Is he in the house?”

Of course I was in the house. Saajid’s house. Drooling on my sublet bed, still bombed out of my fucking wits from the night before.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m an idiot?

I thanked Jeffrey later and I’m still beating myself over the head about not being there for it. For the record: The entry on the main page was “Carrie and the Cocaine”, and a girl who was there told me that:

There was something really dirty written on the main page and a gaggle of underage girls next to me kept giggling through the whole panel”

Yeah, my guess is that would be the reference to the drunk guys “with their dicks hanging out”. Glad to know I’m doing my part to further the perversion of bright young minds all over the world.

Shortly after, the Bloggies ceremony took place. My acceptance speech went something like:

I’m actually presenting awards at this ceremony, and I wanted to present this category… And I would have just said my name, regardless of whatever was printed on the card. I think Nikolai saw through my devious ploy, though, so I had to bribe Mike to do it for me. Thank you!”

It drew laughter (what? I was very hung-over, ok?).

I want to thank all of you for this, by the way. You guys and girls played a really big part in my enjoyment at SxSW, since for the rest of that day I was sort of a pseudo-celebrity, which led to lots of people buying me drinks. Kind of like one of those lesser gods that were all over greek mythology. You know the ones. The deity of mismatched socks, the guy who listens to prayers of small furry animals. That kind.

At the “Branding with Blogs” panel, Jason Fried (Mr. 37 signals) jokingly alluded to the fact that the 37 signals crew doesn’t mind dropping “the f-bomb” and “the s-bomb” from time to time in their blog. From then on, any panel where the panelists didn’t say “fuck” or “shit” was considered a failure.

That night at the Gawker party a few of the Brits and me decided that going to the US and not even trying to get a greencard would be a shameful waste, so we started proposing to Cindy Li, an absolutely charming girl who works with Elsa Kawai. I believe Richard Rutter (Mr. Clagnut) was the most successful of us in this venture (I seem to recall that at one point he just hoisted Cindy over his shoulder and ran off with her… this may not have happened at all, though).

At this point I just started shooting marriage proposals at anyone who crossed my path. I believe more than half of them were actual women, so that’s a pretty good hit ratio.

Now, I have a blank here, and I’d like someone to fill me in on this. The only thing I know about this period is that the next day, lots of random people I barely recognized kept coming up to me and asking if I had woken up alright, and was everything ok?

I may have been sodomized, for all I know.

The next thing I remember is that I was walking with Ian Lloyd through the Austin streets and we somehow misplaced the rest of our crowd. How we accomplished this feat I am not sure, since we were about ten feet behind them. This was the point when we decided to cut our losses and head back. I flagged a cab, which was taken, but the other fare didn’t mind sharing.

It was in this cab that I overheard a most wonderful conversation between the cabbie and the other ride:

— “So, what do you do for a living?”
— “Internet stuff. I work for this website called ‘Fleshbot’. Basically, I stare at porn all day long and they pay me for it. Best job in the world, man”
— “Oh, so you know people in the porn industry then? I’ve always wanted to try that out”
— “Well, we don’t do videos, but I know a bunch of pornographers on the West Coast, and you’re a fine looking guy. Tell you what: Here’s my card. If you can pop wood in front of twenty people and keep it up, give me a call and I’ll hook you up”

Pop wood. Awesome.

— sergio at 01:10 PM  

This story is not new. It is not earth-shattering or mind-blowing, except on a personal level (but that is, after all, the one that matters, is it not?). This story is not new, but it is wonderful, and it happens all the time. Everywhere.

It begins with you falling in love.

This is an important bit. Not because of this love in itself. This one will get fucked up beyond recognition. Best we not stand here and stare at the trainwreck. No, this bit is important because it proves that you’re capable of the feat.

Falling in love. Completely non-intuitive emotion if I’ve ever seen one. One moment you’re wondering what all those old farts with the fucking sonnets were all about. Next thing you know, you’re talking in haikus and delivering red roses by the truckload.

It will turn a man into an idiot, it will.

It is wonderful, too.

So it ends, and you get over it. And you start looking again. Looking. For it. For HER.

Now, you may think you are not a picky person. You may believe that finding that special someone who’ll make you happy is a snap. Just go down the street, turn left at the fruit market, enter the girlfriend shop and order one with everything, right?

I want a compulsive reader who’s a bit bossy and rather kinky, with a smile that’ll put the night sky out’ve a job and skin so sweet you’d spread it over pancakes… oh, yes, the one next to the celery. She’ll do just fine, thank you.”

Oh, you may think you’ll have to settle for a different eye color than you wanted (“you don’t have that in hazel, then? Well, how about a bluish hue?”). You may think that a few compromises will have to be made, a few qualifications left unmet, but that’s ok. It’ll be a snap.

Think again.

After the first failed relationship you pat yourself in the back, chug along and mutter encouragingly to yourself: “no worries, mate, it’s just us, getting back on the wagon, bound to break a few eggs along the way, no?”.

After the third failed relationship you start doubting, just a bit.

After the fifth one, you realize there’s something horribly wrong with this. Something’s amiss. You’re no longer on the lookout for the perfect girl, then. You’d be rather comfy with someone just similar to your dreamgirl.

After your seventh failed relationship tries to stab you, you jump to the conclusion that you’d do just fine with someone this side of the loony bin.

And after the eleventh, and twelfth, and thirteenth, you’re just about fed up with the whole thing. About to give up hope. This is where you decide that you’re better off alone, and start up the path of the sarcastic loner. After all, who knows? there might just be a writing career there, no? I hear Dostoievsky was fucking miserable…

And of course, this is when you meet her.

And she’s perfect. She’s everything you ever wanted, and she’s everything you ever needed, and all you never thought you would find. And it literally takes your breath away every time she walks into the room (which leads to a few uncomfortable situations until you write “remember to breathe” on the back of your hand).

And, for the sake of this story (which has happened, happens and will happen all the time, everywhere), let’s assume that you manage to convince this woman, this amazing human being that being with you is actually a good idea. Let’s assume that she’s enthused by it, even. Let’s assume you’re the happiest you’ve been in oh, what is it… forever?

And it’s great.

Of course, at one point this girl, well she drops by your website, and performs a vanity search on herself. And she finds nothing. Of course. This is the website you’ve been running through your past… what? three relationships? Without dropping so much as a hint about them in it, too. This is the website.

But she is THE girl.

And suddenly you realize that you don’t want to keep this quiet. You want to shout it to the world and holler at the stars. And you want to scream, and you want to let everyone know.

So you write a little story. Nothing fancy. Nothing new. And it happens all the time, everywhere.

Except it’s never happened to you.

Her name is Livier, and I’m falling in love with her.

— sergio at 04:39 PM  

Part One: In which our hero starts his slow descent into Web-Standards oblivion and debauchery, kicks it with the brits, insults a renowned accesibility expert and frees Scotland…

Making sense of what South by SouthWest meant for me has proven to be a difficult task. Bits of info, sounds and images collide in my head, creating patterns as quickly as they dissolve into blurriness, due as much to the thoroughly awesome experience that it was as to the overall state of drunkness I spent it in.

For reasons I will mention at a later post, South by Southwest caught me at the apex of a two-week-long caffeine high so grueling, so fearsome, I almost lost one of the connection planes because I was dozing off on the platform, so you have to take this into account to understand my state of mind as I got off the last plane at the heart of The Red State™.

As soon as I got off in Austin, the bus driver let me ride for free because I had no change. This set up the karmic mood as one in which the effects of my idiocy are palliated by the benevolence of others. Since this is pretty much the mood I usually go through life in, I was pretty happy with this beginning, and set out to work the conference completely in Cruise Mode.

One day before going to Austin I secured a stay in an apartment with a dude from the University of Texas. When I got there, this indian looking guy with a stoner’s demeanor (to be fair, I never did see Saajid smoke weed) opened the door. Inside the place, which was a complete dump, two guys were staring fixedly at a playstation and drinking, while another one seemed to have passed out in a corner. You must remember I was completely surfing on vibe by this point, so, as I stared at this panorama of post-apocalyptic destruction somehow molded into an apartment, I figured simply: “So this is the kind of conference it’s going to be… Cool”.

Gonzo-Blogging at its rawest, baby.

Going to SxSW, one of the first things you realize is that the Web-Standards CSS Design Community is exactly that: An actual, breathing, pulsing community. Having published my share of css-based design articles meant I have worked with or interacted with a bunch of these folk on some level through the past years, so for me the biggest goal of the conference was putting a face to the bookmarks. And I did.

The very first person I ran into was Andy Clarke, that Malarkey guy. At that point, he was just hanging out at the smoker’s area, checking out the newly published CSS Zen book, but over the next few days, we would hold some very interesting conversations (“you see, Andy, the main difference between the US conquest and México’s conquest is that, whereas the conquerors here started killing off the native population, the conquerors in my country started fucking it”). He’s a most cromulent and upright person, I assure you.

As luck would have it, I ended up hanging out mostly with the Brits, of which there seemed to be thousands (ok, more like a dozen, but since they were all panelists, it seemed like an all-out invasion, I shit you not). Jeremy Keith was one of the most entertaining people on the premises, and by far the most passionate about code. He got into a Liquid vs. Fixed width design argument that became the stuff of legend. I hear people almost came to blows over it (feel free to pair that statement and picture as you will). He and Andy Budd are two of the friendliest and more knowledgeable people you’re likely to run into at one of these things.

There was, of course, Joe Clark. I have worked with him before, but up until now had no idea who the man behind the book was. What can I say about Joe Clark? Let’s put it this way: if asshole was a country, Joe would be its king. The man has turned being a Dick into an artform. And it works, believe me. He pulls it off with unparalleled flamboyance, and is very straightforward about it. Word has it that on one of the accesibility/usability panels, he wrote “BORING!!” in huge, 96-pt type on his laptop, held it up for everyone behind him to see, and then turned it to the front so the panelists could see too. Overall, Joe is one of my very favorite people in Web Design (btw, I drilled him about the similarities between his book cover and a a certain well-known internet image, and he denied any knowledge of wrongdoing, of which I’m still not convinced).

Saturday night brought in a party that was aptly described by someone (Aaron?) as “The Nineties”:

Just like the nineties, it had sword-swallowers, half-naked dancing girls and psychedelic lights. And just like the nineties, it was over in an instant”

I got half my face painted by an artiste at this party, and after it was over I spent the rest of the night in a drunken haze up and down Sixth street, walking up to random girls and yelling:

My name eez Villiam Vallace, and I vant FREEDOOOOM!!”

— sergio at 07:12 PM  

Quick Update: I’m at SxSW, enjoying the hell out of myself, and hanging out with Andy Clarke, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith, the Clagnut guy, Andrei Hierasimchuk, Paul Scrivens, D Keith Robinson, Jason Santa Maria, Jon Hicks, Jeffrey Zeldman, Dave Shea, Joe Clark et al (links to be added in the future, but you know who these guys are).

You would not believe how cool these people are, and the fun we’ve been having. I must be the only person who’s not actually connected all the time, so the website has been getting spam by the truckloads, but I will have a consistent connection soon and post a longer entry with the specifics.

Highlights: I won the Latin American Bloggie (thank you everyone!!) and was there to pick it up, which was great fun (Sal: Saw your comments on the projection screen with the IRC chat thing. Thanks!), and Zeldman used my site as an example in one of the best panels of the conference, which of course, I missed due to being hung over (story of my life: The best bits of it happen elsewhere).

Thanks and bear with me!

— sergio at 02:56 PM  

I met Carrie at the men’s room of “La Sixtina” on a particularly crowded Friday while passing burning hot pee next to a comatose drunk. She stomped into the place wearing a distraught expression and a bell-cut dress that was more notable for the parts it didn’t cover than for the ones it did.

— “Edgar! Edgar! Are you here?”

Without missing a beat, five very drunk guys turned round towards her, their dicks hanging out.

— “I’ve got Edgar right here, baby”
— “Con ese cuerpecito, puedes llamarme como quieras, mija!”
— “Yeah, that’s his name, and he’s in my pants!”

Since I was already leaving the loo, and she was in the way, I figured I might as well take her out of there to more hospitable environments. So I did.

— “What the fuck was that? You’re going to get gang-raped doing that, woman!”
— “I… I was looking for Edgar. He’s my cousin. He’s from Monterrey, and I’m afraid he’s, well, he’s a bit drunk, and I haven’t seen him for a long while”

I looked down. She had freakishly long legs, topped by a picture perfect butt.

I’m a sucker for legs.

— “How’s he look?”

After getting a cursory description of the guy, and with no intention of finding him at all, I went back into the bathroom, where I lit up a smoke and stared at the ceiling while she waited outside. When a suitably plausible amount of time had passed, I came out.

— “Nope. No Edgar. Sorry”
— “You sure?”
— “Completely. Checked everywhere. We should go round the place a bit, though. See if we find him”—I’m so smooth…

As luck would have it, we bumped into Edgar in a matter of minutes. He looked awfully underage and was trying to pick a fight with the bartender. Carrie took him by the arm and introduced me as “a friend”. Edgar went ballistic, started trash-talking about how they wouldn’t take his money and waved a few large bills around. I told him I’d fix him something to drink, nicked his money, grabbed a drink off a nearby table and gave it to him. He seemed quite pleased.

— “Carrie! How are you? Long time no see!
— “Oh, hi, Jerry! It’s been so long! This is…”
— “Sergio. And we’ve met”
— “Yeah, I know him, actually. We study together”

There goes my plausible deniability.

— “Yeah, we’re journalists. Will be, anyway. Future of the country and all that crap, right here, girl” — I had been drinking since noon, and the buzz had turned into a nice little ringing at the back of my head by that point. Like my own private orchestra of crickets.

The bartender kept eyeing Edgar suspiciously, and I feared we might get Security sicced on our asses at any moment, so I made a good case for a strategic retreat. Out we went. Carrie, her girl friend, Jerry, Edgar (drunk as fuck) and me (too).

While Carrie wasn’t looking Edgar tried to pick up a fight with the valet parking. I let the valet rough him up a little before stepping in and excusing “my friend”. The sawed-off little runt was already getting on my nerves big time, but Carrie’s legs were working their magic and the night was still young.

We hit two more nightclubs that night. In a moment of struggle, cousin Edgar inadvertently elbowed my head and made me lose a contact lense (this was before I had my eyes lasered). That earned the little fucker drink-spit and “involuntary” bumps into every-single-corner of the place each time I had to carry him around.

He honestly thought I was just being careless.

Eventually we took Carrie’s girl friend back to her place. We left Edgar at the club with some baby boomers we ran into who claimed to know him. Carrie was too plastered to care and I was actually hoping they’d anally rape him. Edgar had lost most motor functions and couldn’t articulate coherent speech, so he didn’t get any say in it.

When we got there, Jerry accompanied token girl friend to her door while Carrie and me locked ourselves in the car and went at it like neurotic monkeys on acid. The windows were completely fogged and she was straddling me —An amazon surrounded by a preternatural halo of light due to my impaired visual condition— when we heard earnest harrumping from outside the car. We rearranged our clothes, repositioned ourselves, checked for damages and let Jerry back into his car.

The next day Jerry would tell me to take care of Carrie, ‘cause she was a really nice girl, which promptly made me wonder about the ethics of banging Jerry’s high school sweetheart on the backseat of his car. Then he got a wistful look on his face and talked about how “he had been after her for years, but in the end, they were just friends”.

Right then I knew I was going to hell.

— Don’t worry, Jer. She’s uh… a fine girl… fine girl. I’ll make sure I take care of —Connie? Wendy? Jenny? Rhonda? Ashley?— uh… her.

When we went back to the bar, we found cousin Edgar sitting on the steps to the dance floor with a terrified look on his face. He’d been crying (Score!).

— “They gave me cocaine, cousin. They GAVE ME COCAINE!”

We stared at him quizzically, mutedly wondering if this was a good or a bad thing.

— “I have never snorted cocaine! I am a DRUG-ADDICT now!! Oh, my GOD, What am I gonna DO??”

I excused myself and went to the bathroom to laugh my ass off while Edgar bawled on the dance floor and Carrie sat by the side, staring at her cousin in disbelief, undoubtedly wondering what she’d tell his mother when she saw him like that. He was still yelling when I got back (“I was going to go to the University!! Now my life will go TO WASTE!!”).

It was day already when we went out of the club. Edgar was still deeply set into the worst paranoic trip I’ve ever witnessed (Frankly, I don’t think what they gave him was cocaine, at all). As we neared my place, I told him, matter-of-factly, that the addiction could be handled… with work.

As I got out of the car, I said “Don’t worry, mate. You’ll be alright”, then leaned closer and whispered into his ear “As long as you don’t fall asleep”. I slammed the door shut and saw his horrified face staring back at me as they sped off. I waved at him, smiling, and went into my apartment, cheerfully picturing Edgar in a talcum-powder/PCP induced caffeinated paranoid frenzy for the next two days…

— sergio at 03:33 PM  

I just got my first, very own Cease and Desist letter from a lawyer. It relates to this entry, in which I bitched about ACE Insurance and the treatment they had given me. The interesting bit of the letter states:

“It has come to our attention that you have misappropriated and defaced the ACE Logo in connection with your website blog at http://overcaffeinated.net/comments/1716. Needless to say, your comments are untrue and offensive.

You are directed to stop all use of the ACE Logo immediately. Your unauthorized and vulgar use of the ACE logo is unacceptable and an infringement of Ace’s trademark rights.”

I am not sure where I stand —legally— on this one, and, needless to say, I have complied. I know better than to get into a fight over something as silly as this. I have left the entry content in there, as it is not mentioned in the letter and most likely falls under legal protection of parody.

I want to comment on this, though: I wrote that entry while pissed off. What prompted me to do so was that this company entered a service contract with me without so much as the benefit of a signature or proper ID confirmation. When I decided to cancel the service, I found that they had no listed toll-free number, and the documents they sent me did not provide any information towards that goal. After googling and contacting them, they provided a long-distance number for customer support. I did not use that, and instead asked to be transferred from the only toll-free number they have.

Upon being transferred, I was promptly left hanging no less than 4 times for periods of more than twenty minutes, sometimes being hung up on afterwards (had I been using the phone they had given me, this would have resulted in a very expensive phone charge). When I finally reached a representative, he was downright hostile with me, and informed me that I had to send a fax stating I wanted out to a number he gave me.

The number did not work (and I later found out that it was in the US).

It was not until I called again and started threatening everyone with legal action through Profeco, that I got an actual, working fax number in México to send the cancellation to.

I have no respect for the way these people do business.

— sergio at 09:21 AM