The hills of West Virginia are deeply lush in the summer and the humidity of the rain forest weighs heavy in the lungs. Overnight, a thick, cool fog will steep the land, lasting just before daybreak, when it settles onto the grass as dew.

In the year 1994 I worked as a disk jockey at the local (and only) alternative nightclub in Huntington. I was going through a lot and my thoughts were always chaos. Many were the nights that I would come home from work at four in the morning, restless, and walk through the fog and the peace.

I enjoyed the stillness while coming down from the buzz of working and would ramble far from the house. It was a ritual.

One night I met a dog. The fog was exceptionally thick and so I heard his paws padding on the asphalt before his silhouette emerged. He was a golden color and short-haired, a magnificent animal. He didn’t have a collar but was clearly cared for.

The dog walked up to me but refused a pet when I bent down, hand outstretched. He made a chuffing sound and started walking away before stopping and looking back. He chuffed again, and when I walked towards him, he started walking further.

Lone dogs were not uncommon there and then and I assumed he was a neighbor’s charge. However, he was leading me somewhere. I followed.

We walked down Hammill Road and onto South Altamont, which was then paved with gravel which crunched under my beaten Chuck Taylor’s. The dog was growing more agitated, chuffing louder and with greater frequency.

Eventually the dog cut off the road, into the deepening forest. The fog flowed through the trees and the moonlight cut through the canopy and here was an earthy smell of renewal.

I felt drunk and foolish, following a stray dog through the forest. I knew these woods by sun; at night they were foreign, but I wasn’t afraid: this was my home, and I was merely seeing another side of it.

The dog chuffed louder and picked up its pace, heading up the hill, leaves crunching under-paw. I knew where we were supposed to be – or at least I thought I did – but we must have slipped around the house I knew was sitting off the road because I never saw it.

A quarter mile from the road the dog let out an actual bark. Not a bark of fear or anger, nor one of warning. It was a bark to attract attention, and that’s when I heard it.

From the top of the hill, a low rasping through the fog, like someone sucking in a big breath, followed by a scream, loud and abrupt and terrifying, more so because it was staccato in nature: “AHH-AHH-AAAAH-AAAHHH-AAHHH” echoing through the murk of the forest.

A figure rose suddenly in shadow, slippery, and spread what I was sure were wings out through the pin points of moonlight. It seemed to me to keep getting larger and more indistinct; time was suddenly meaningless to me.

The dog ran towards the shadow. I did not. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move at all. I felt adrenaline drop down my spine and my legs twitched and the air tasted metallic and foul. The figure seemed to shrink, and there was a quick breathing sound, like a “hesh-hesh-hesh”.

Then, just as suddenly as it happened, it was gone. So was the dog. I stood still for the longest time, hoping that I was invisible in the dark. My heartbeat was loud enough to hear in Kentucky.

I sat down in the leaves and waited for my heart to normalize before creeping as silently as I could back to the gravel, so that I could go home, to my dog.

I grew up hearing that the Mothman was a portent, a signifier of pending change or a reckoning. Within three months I had moved across the country to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I’ve remained to this day.

I have some ideas about what that actually was. I think it was a hobo and his dog. I think he stood up quickly, trying to scare me, or summon the dog. I think he was more scared of me than I him. I think he ran up and over the hill, taking his dog with him.

At least that’s what I hope happened.

I have been working from home full time for around five years. This is not my first remote-work job; I have pretty much always done this in some form or another, even when I was supposed to go to the office.

Going to an office gives your brain a strong context-switch. When you go to the office, you have: home -> commute -> office -> commute -> home. Now you don’t have travel modes, which are natural context switchers. You’ll have to adapt. It’s easy, but requires discipline.

The first and most important things are routine and distance.

Routine

You need to create a routine. This routine will include what you should call your “working hours”. Your working hours do not need to be consecutive. Spread them out in chunks if you like or do them all at once – it’s up to you. However, I’m going to tell you that you will have problems getting a straight eight hours in, and in fact will advise you not to try.

You will develop a routine. You used to have one, but it involved commuting for an hour and then sitting in an office and then commuting for another hour. Now you have those two hours back! Fill them.

My daily routine goes: Wake, Run, Shower, Coffee, Email. That brings me to about 9 am. Then: Grocery store across the street (food for the day). At eleven I take the pup out to pee. After that I begin my first “work block”.

Work blocks are usually 2 to 4 hours – enough time to handle a set of tasks. This is how you should think about working: not as “time spent on the clock” but “tasks accomplished”. You’ll have several work blocks throughout the day. Schedule them when you feel right.

Think of your day as “slots”. Sometimes slots get filled, sometimes they don’t. I have a slot for “errands that require me to get in a car”, and it goes between “running” and “groceries”.

Don’t feel bad if you work really late! You may find yourself doing work at two a.m. because why not? An important thing is that you must give yourself permission to break the norms because the norms are broken already (more on this in a bit).

Distance

The second thing that you need to create is distance – psychologically – between your “work life” and your “home life.” This is most easily accomplished by creating a “working space” – a place you go to do your work that isn’t part of the “daily routine” of your household.

Maybe you work from the guest room. Maybe on the porch. Maybe you set up your nest at the end of your dining room table. Where ever this place is it must allow you to create a “transistion”.

I used to work on my building’s roof where I could smoke cigars all day. Now I use our guest room.

Never work from your bed or your bedroom. Consider that to be a sacrosanct line and crossing it is always moving to “home life”.

Some people like going to cafes. I find that they are hit-or-miss, with lots of distractions. You do you, but in the age of COVID-19, I’d avoid them.

Take phone calls outside if you can. That helps create distance as well.

Productivity Anxiety

You may get really anxious because you don’t think you’re being productive. Ignore that shit; it’s a lie. Productivity really can’t be measured that way.

You’ll spend hours doing nothing because you’re stuck and you’ll feel shitty about it. You’ll get unstuck eventually, but until then it’s anxiety-town. This is a terrible place to be.

Here’s how to fix it: Go play a game for an hour or take a walk or vacuum the floors or cook a meal or take a yoga class.

Is this fucking off? No. No, it is not.

You have days in the office where you don’t get fuck-all done, too – only you had to pay the Commute Troll its toll.

The difference between getting nothing done at the office and getting nothing done at home is that you can fake what you think of as “productivity” in the office. You can always look busy if there are other people around.

Here’s the thing: that’s not being productive. It’s all a bias illusion. You are no more or less productive or stuck at work or at home; it’s just at home you can only compare your apparent lack of progress to yourself.

Freedom comes from realizing that this is an illusion and knowing that your brain does not stop working. It is always solving problems, always working to unstick you. It will let you know when it’s solved your problem. Trust it.

Don’t spend your “stuck” time feeling anxious. Use that time to do something useful or fun. Use it for yourself! Just do not feel guilty about it.

Procrastination

You may find that you end up taking on more and more chores around the house. Fight this impulse. It’s procrastination.

If a thing needs doing (the dishes are dirty), do it (wash them). But don’t do extra stuff (sharpen the knives). Does your bookshelf really need organizing right now? Probably not; lower the priority of that task.

Self Care

Now that you’ve got all this time you’ll find that you start filling it. It is super easy to fill up all your time with work and chores. A really important thing that you need to do is carve out an hour of time every day for yourself and only yourself.

I’m talking about “set your phone on do not disturb for an hour and do a thing.” I will play a game or run around the lake, maybe. Do the thing for yourself and only for yourself. Schedule this time if you have to.

Get dressed every day. Take a shower at least every other day. You will likely have video conference meetings, sometimes randomly, and you need to be ready for those.

Go outside at least once a day – if only to get the mail or see another human being.

Make your bed every day. Making your bed creates a psychological marker: Now is the time that the day starts. It’s time to get busy.

Buy a french press. Make your own coffee.

Substance Use

Regarding substance use: I have no advice for you. You’re at home. You know how you work best. Get the job done.

Maybe you drink a beer or two when you code. Maybe you don’t. Get the job done. Maybe you eat some marijuana gummies. Maybe you don’t. Get the job done.

I used to smoke cigars on the roof in the sun. Now I don’t.

However that works out is between you, your employers, and the Great Programmers Of Our Simulation.

Communication

You’ll find that you change the way you want to communicate with your co-workers. This is going to be different for everyone, but my experience is that people tend to avoid spammy communication systems while working from home (e.g., you’ll learn to hate Slack).

On-demand communication (things that ping you a lot) are easy to get lost in when you work in an office because it feeds into that whole “looking busy” part. How useful is the constant pinging really? Shut it off. Shut off your email and chat programs. Only open them once an hour, at best.

You will quickly learn which meetings could have been merely an email.

Good luck!

Christmas morning came and we children destroyed reams of wrapping paper revealing a series of molded chunks of plastic inside cardboard boxes: toys and talismans that would possess brief importance in my life before being later supplanted by a different toy. Packages containing clothing (ugh, corduroy pants) were small disappointments hidden behind smiles but we knew what to open based on the shape of the package.

I didn’t know it then, but Virginia’s gift to me would become one of my most treasured possessions: a boxed set of the Lord of the Rings. I had seen the Rankin/Bass Hobbit cartoon and had already developed a deep love for Dungeons & Dragons.

I started reading them immediately and voraciously. This was sometimes a confusing process. Someone gave me a dictionary to use after becoming exasperated at my questions about the meaning of words. I felt terror for the Hobbits on Weathertop, sorrow for Gandalf in the depths of Moria, and deep betrayal by Boromir. The books changed my life and I re-read them every year for almost two decades, committing huge swaths of them to memory.

My copies are dog-eared and sun-bleached now, held together with scotch and packing tape. I still read them. Despite their fragility, I still lend them out to anyone who asks because books are made to be read and loved.

Virginia was born on May 7th, 1920. She was an orphan (as was her husband, Howard) though we believe that her adopted father was also her biological father. The word “gumption” best described her personality – or perhaps “piss and vinegar”. She made up her mind and that’s what was going to happen and that’s all there was to it.

She died this morning, January 19th, at the age of ninety-seven.

She was a lioness, fearless and true.

I remember being scolded one year for trying to clear her walk of snow. Despite being in her 80s, she wasn’t going to let anyone else do her chores. She continued to shovel her own snow deep into her 90s, too; it just took her longer. She would bundle up, step out into the heavy Minnesota weather, clear perhaps a foot or two, and return inside to rest for a bit before beginning the exercise again.

She loved games and word puzzles. She taught me to play Rummikub and was one of the few people who could routinely defeat me. She even once played a session of Dungeons & Dragons with me, though I imagine she found it confusing.

Recently, she once again ignored the pleadings of her children to “slow down”. She slipped on a patch of ice and shattered her arm, requiring surgery and a promised long road of rehabilitation and pain. There came a day when she was simply done and events unfolded from there. Implacably. Mercilessly. Shakespearean.

My heart has been clenched for weeks. It has been a long time since I have felt this level of grief.

I find myself running my fingers over my tattered copies of Lord of the Rings. I reach for any volume and read random passages, each one evoking tiny memories and soothings. Here I am drinking cocoa and trying to keep the names of the Dwarves straight in my head. There I am laying on my back, waiting to be called to dinner, as Sam and Frodo escape from Amon Hen. Look! I am being thrilled as Eowyn destroys the Witch-King of Angmar during fifth grade recess.

For Christmas in 1984, Virginia gave me a boxed set of The Dragonlance Chronicles, further cementing my love for fantasy and adventure. It was her way, to recognize the things we loved and to share our enthusiasms.

I will miss her terribly.

In November of 1991 I worked two jobs. Most nights I spun records at Gumby’s, the local alternative nightclub. Other nights I was on-air radio talent at WMUL FM, the college radio station, where I was also a producer (think “music director” for a single format). It is the intersection of these two jobs that put me in the position to lay out GG Allin.

I would often use my position at one place to help out the other. Mostly this took the form of doing on-air interviews with bands that were playing in town. We would record the interviews, edit them for profanity and time, and then broadcast them a few hours before the show. This was a win for everyone: the station got a listener bump, the club got an attendance bump, and I often got to party with rock stars. I did a lot of interviews. Most of them were boring but every now and then I’d land a gem.

On a Wednesday evening in November, 1991, GG Allin and his band the Murder Junkies were going to play at Gumby’s. I had no interest in seeing them perform which was good because I worked radio on Wednesday nights. However, like the dutiful music nerd that I was, I agreed to set up an interview with GG and to broadcast it. We were to meet at Davidson’s Records, a store ran by my friend Dave, which was across the street from the radio offices.

GG was late to arrive, of course. He was alone (no entourage) and he was thin and twitchy and clearly not doing well at all. He had sunglasses on and a hoodie and looked more than a little like the wanted posters for Ted Kaczynski, back when we only knew him as the Unibomber. He stank like a homeless person in summertime.

Every third word out of GG’s mouth was “fuck”, “fucking”, or “motherfucker”. I do not wilt from exposure to foul language but the Federal Communications Commission was pretty keen on not letting words like that over the airwaves. Keen enough that I would end up facing some pretty serious fines if I knowingly broadcast them.

We talked for a bit, the three of us: Me, Dave, and GG. It comes to light that GG thought the interview was going to be broadcast live. When I corrected his confusion, he went absolutely apeshit as if a switch had been thrown inside of his tiny junkie mind. He called me a coward and a “Tool of the Man” who carried water for the censors. Little flecks of spit and/or hopefully chicken kept flying out of his mouth while he ranted. At this point I am getting a little heated as well but I’m trying to be cool because it’s my friend’s record store.

Finally, he said, “Well, if the interview isn’t going to be live, then I’m not fucking doing it, you fucking coward.” To this I replied, cold as ice: “Then we are not fucking doing the fucking interview. Motherfucker.”

This was his last straw, apparently. It doesn’t matter what he said to me, about me, about my family, about my friends, about my jobs – it mattered that I called him a “motherfucker”.

So he took a swing at me.

If you’ve ever been in a fist fight with a junkie, you already know how this ends. Fist fights are always tricky: you never know who can fight and who just shows. I’m from West Virginia. We used to get into fist fights for fun. Because we were bored.

He made a feeble feint with his left before trying to land a haymaker with his right. By and large, heroin addicts are slow and transparent, so I saw all of this coming for a country mile. It was like he had spent a long time thinking about how to throw a punch like that but had never actually done it. He lifted his left fist and then tried to swing his right.

I took a step forward, into his zone, and connected. Hard. He fell backwards into a CD rack

and he went down, legs splayed out, and all the compact discs fell down on his head like out of a cartoon or a shitty romantic comedy.

I stood over him, really angry, and shouted down, “Okay, motherfucker. You want to go outside with me? I will knock out your remaining teeth.”

GG did not want to go outside with me.

He sat on the floor, confused, as if he were not sure how (or why) he found himself on the ground. I wasn’t sure if he was high or not but it was suddenly like a spell had been lifted and I could see him for what he truly was and I was disgusted by it. If anything he started smelling worse.

Dave kicked him out of the record store. “Get the fuck out before I call the cops!” GG picked himself up as best he could and slunk out the door. I helped Dave pick up the CDs and put them back on the rack and when I left I half-expected that I’d have a junkie with renewed courage to deal with but no: GG had hot-footed it back to the club.

That night he would shove one of the club’s microphones up his own asshole. There is not one moment that I regret being absent from that spectacle.

A year and a half later, GG would die as he lived: pointlessly and on heroin.

I nurture and love this pan. I make food for the people I love with it.

I did not buy this pan. It was my grandmother’s. It came to me after her death. I remember her frying chicken with it. She made food for the people she loved with it. She nurtured it because it was once her grandmother’s, too.

Cast iron pans work because of seasoning. Seasoning keeps the pan from rusting and creates a surface that doesn’t stick: ideal for cooking. A pan’s seasoning is actually a thin skin of hardened and polymerised fat. The process of seasoning cast iron is both a science and an art. Like any skin, seasoning can be damaged. This is what happened to my pan: it suffered a scrape that went through to the bare metal, and from that violence bloomed the red tidings of rust. I was distressed.

When a pan’s seasoning is damaged, it must be re-seasoned. A true re-seasoning is a difficult and lengthy process and begins with the removal of the pan’s old seasoning. This is a brutal doing. All the cruft and crap must be removed. Steel wool will grind away all the black from the iron. The correct depth is when the surface turns grey or silver. That’s the bare iron.

Grinding to the iron takes time, patience, and no small amount of agony. It must be done clinically. While it is possible to shorten this effort through the use of aggressive chemicals, such techniques are dangerous and not recommended. It is best, always, to do the hard work on one’s own, relentlessly. When or if rust appears, that must be ground away as well. In the end, fingers may bleed, but the iron revealed is stronger and blessed by the suffering.

When the pan’s surface has been returned to a dull grey sheen (you’ve flushed your bullshit), it is time to re-forge its seasoning. This is a process that cannot be rushed: doing so courts disaster. It must be done methodically and with patience.

Cast iron can be seasoned with many kinds of oils. Most will produce a decent, usable result. For my pan, I chose to season it with flax oil. Flax oil is a food-grade version of linseed oil, which has been used by artists for centuries to provide long-lasting sheen to paintings. Flax oil has low “smoke point” – the temperature at which the oil begins to burn and produce smoke.

You will want to cover a cookie sheet in foil and place it in the bottom rack of the oven. This is to catch inadvertent oil drippings from the pan. There will be no drips if the process is done correctly but it never hurts to be careful.

Flax oil should be coated over the entire surface of pan. This must be a very light covering. Once the pan is covered, as much oil as possible must be removed from it using a paper towel. This must be done continuously until no more oil can be removed with a paper towel. Only the barest hint of oil sheen should be apparent. I suggest wearing latex gloves to reduce mess.

The pan should then be placed in the oven on the top rack, cooking surface down. At this point the oven should be turned on and heated to 500° Fahrenheit (or 450°, whatever your oven can do). Let the pan heat along with the oven’s pre-heat cycle. When the oven reaches temperature, leave it there to forge in the heat for one hour. Baking flax oil produces a peculiar scent that is unusual but not unpleasant. The odor only lasts for the first half hour that the pan is in the oven. My wife tolerated it but I asked her permission before each burn.

Turn the oven off after an hour. Let the pan cool in the oven unmolested for two hours after which it may be inspected. It should be darker in color but only barely.

After the first firing of the pan, you must repeat the process: oil the pan, bake it for an hour, and allow it to cool for two. This must be done a total of six times at a minimum, including the first firing. Six is the magic number. Six is the smallest perfect number. But if the devil is six, then god is seven. I baked my pan a seventh time, for luck.

Since that period, I have set about determining what behaviors and traits in myself that I to encourage and grow. I have also decided which parts of myself I want to improve or jettison. I’ve had some successes in that regard. Some changes were obvious and carried immediate result. Others are much more involved and subtle, with slow effect. It’s slow going, sometimes frustratingly slow, but nothing of value is ever rushed and I have patience.

When I pulled the pan from the oven for the last time, after the extra firing (for luck!), I felt a deep satisfaction and pride in my work. This is a real thing I have done. The process was difficult. It required skill and patience.

Today, the pan feels different now. It rolls smoother in my calloused palms. The seasoning is subtly iridescent in the light: a thousand golden flecks glimmer in the deep black of its abyssal surface.

Tonight, I will pick up my sleeping dog and move her so that I can climb into bed next to my wife. I will open my book. I will daydream before I dream for real. I will plan out the next day. I will fall asleep.

Tomorrow, I will make food for the people I love with my pan.

The answer is, unsurprisingly, that I won. However, it ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

The fight was over in November of 2013 and I could have written about it then but decided to hold off in case there was any further legal trickery that required attention.

After serving me with a Universal Domain Name Dispute Complaint, I found myself to be luckily connected with Paul Alan Levy and Public Citizen, who decided to take my case. There was a series of emails that went back and forth between the counsel of Gaijin Entertainment and my own counsel, all of which were entertaining to read.

Paul told them “no, nothing doing, and we’ll be going to court if you persist.” At this point, Gaijin Entertainment’s legal team opted to “suspend” the UDRP complaint. Suspension of these complaints lasts for one calendar month, during which time parties are expected to come to a settlement. At the end of the month, if there has been no activity, the complaint is automatically withdrawn (though without prejudice – meaning it can be refiled), and a certain percentage of the fees are returned to the complaining party.

Eventually, Gaijin Entertainment offered a “settlement” agreement, which effectively read as follows:

• I, and all successors of the domain, recognize and acknowledge Gaijin Entertainment’s ownership and rights to the trademark “Gaijin”, worldwide;
• I, and all successors of the domain, agree not to challenge the trademark;
• I, and all successors or the domain, agree not to seek registration of the trademark “gaijin”;
• I enter a confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement regarding Gaijin Entertainment;
• I agree to place a prominent disclaimer on my website pointing visitors to the Gaijin Entertainment website;
• And that the agreement would be binding to all successors of the domain.

Unsurprisingly, our response was akin to “sit and spin”. The language was stronger, however. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess the precise vocabulary.

After another few weeks, the URDP suspension period expired and the complaint was automatically withdrawn.

I’ve heard nothing since.

Hopefully now I’ll be able to write more without fear.

Obviously, I was not going to do that. I have never operated a game development business through this domain or name. Even if I had, there exists seven years of prior art in my name. My attorney, Mike Godwin, sent them a letter stating that I was not going to entertain the idea and that they should retract their claim.

There were no further comments from Gaijin Entertainment and I thought that was the end of it.

On Friday, October 4th, Mike Godwin and I were notified that Gaijin Entertainment had filed a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) claim to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In it they claim that I am doing damage to their trademark and seek to have the domain name stripped from me and awarded to them due to trademark violation.

I have the word “courage” tattooed on my arm. I am not going to let this happen without a fight.

Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen has agreed to represent me regarding this issue. He has asked opposing counsel to withdraw the UDRP claim.

If they do not, we will seek a declaratory judgment of non-infringement in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, taking the fight to them rather than waiting around.

Among the complaints are some interesting bullet points.

• My domain name, registered on May 22, 1995, “fully incorporates” the “Gaijin” wordmark, which was not registered until October 11, 2011.
• One of the most prominent tags within my blog is “Games” and this apparently confuses people.
• I am apparently not using the word “gaijin” correctly (note that Gaijin Entertainment is not, either, so I’m unsure why this would be a thing). For sake of explanation, I chose the word “gaijin”, meaning “foreigner” or “alien” because at the time I was studying philosophical principles regarding identity and definition – specifically about how things are defined through contrast and opposition, and therefore my own identity, from my perspective, was always and forever going to be “alien” to me (since I cannot see myself except as in opposition).
• Certain blog posts of mine have bad words in them and apparently tarnish other people’s reputations.
• My email address apparently confuses people into thinking I am an employee of their company.
• I am apparently attempting to extort $750,000.00 dollars from them. This comes from a throw-away email exchange I apparently had with one of their employees. I have never had any intention to sell the domain but if someone seriously offered me a million dollars I’d be negligent in not considering the offer. I get offers at least once a month and always for some paltry sum (like $100 dollars). Telling people to throw out a “big number” usually ends the conversations quickly.
• The fact that I show up after them in Google searches means that I am somehow diverting traffic from them.

Below is a pdf of the complaint.

Gaijin_WIPO UDRP Complaint_AS_v10 4 2013

And got away with it.

Many moons ago, I went to kollidge and lerned sumthings. Mostly about oil painting and philosophy (two subjects that are clearly of demand in this adult economy), but I also learned a lot about radio because I was a disk jockey for the college station, WMUL FM 88.1.

I slotted tracks for a year or so before being promoted to the “producer” of the “Alternative” format. This was just as the grunge era was taking off, so being involved in music at this time was an amazing thing. On half of the nights of the week, I spun in the local “alternative” nightclub, Gumby’s, which was also an amazing thing. I got paid in beer.

I went to CMJ, got in a fight with G.G. Allin (obviously before his death), drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s with David Yow of The Jesus Lizard, interviewed lots of artists, and picked up a whole shoebox of phone numbers (which were never called).

I loved this gig. I’d probably do it today if there were any money in it. Which there wasn’t.

To make money, though, I got a job at another radio station. A different kind of radio station. A Christian radio station.

Imagine my gravelly ass voice saying, “You’re listening to the broadcast voice of Jesus Christ in the tri-state, FM 107 point 9, WEMM.”

Mostly the job consisted of overnights or weekend mornings and it was nearly always pushing “carts”. For the un-enlightened, “carts” were like eight-track cassettes except that they looped forever and knew when to stop playing. Radio programs used them (do they still?) for intros and outtros (both were on the same cart, in sequence).

Carts are “fire and forget”. You slot it, pot it (turn up the broadcast volume for it), press play, wait for it to count down, and then start the program, usually provided on cassette tape or (rarely, in those days) compact disc or vinyl.

So my time, especially on Sunday mornings, was spent thus:

1. Slot the cart (5 seconds)
2. Slot the tape (5 seconds)
3. Fire the cart, wait for the intro to finish (15 – 30 seconds)
4. Fire the tape (2 seconds)
5. Read a book (30 minutes)
6. Fire the cart’s outtro (15 seconds)
7. Repeat for 6 hours

Anyways it was pretty boring but I was basically getting paid ten bucks an hour to re-read Lord of the Rings.

Normally the Sunday shows were pre-recorded but every now and then there was a little preacher man who would stop by the studio and run it live. He had a little retinue who accompanied him: a woman to play piano and a middle-aged guitarist. They would set up in Studio B, where there was a piano and multiple microphones.

Studio B was wired up so that it was connected to a single “pot,” or potentiometer. Pots are sort-of almost like “volume controls” – they determine how strong the broadcast is going to be from their source. Higher = louder.

Pots are usually color-coded. In this case: red for turntables, blue for carts, green for cassettes. Gold for my mike; silver for the mikes in Studio B.

Anyways. These guys show up and get set up in Studio B. The time comes for them to go live, so I put on my headphones (you always do this when manipulating on-air sound), and I slot their intro cart. They know to be silent until I give them the “go” signal, which is exactly as cool as you think it is: they’re looking at me through the glass, and I just turn and point to them.

So here’s what happens:

I start the intro and I crack the silver pot up to about 1/4. The intro plays, and when it starts to fade, I do the cool-ass finger-pointing while fading down the cart. In Studio B, they immediately start going to town: I see her start banging away on the piano, and he’s dealing thunder from the pulpit.

But my headphones, they are silent. The needle is flat.

Sometimes the mikes are wonky, so I crank the silver pot up some more. Nothing, just a hiss in the headphones. We’re now about five seconds into DEAD AIR, which is every DJ’s nightmare. I’m confused, so I say to myself:

And the headphones bleed back to me, very loud, “what the fuck-uck-uck-uck” while the needle on the board pegs itself all the way to the right.

I’d cranked up the gold pot. My microphone. Not the silver pot, which was Studio B.

Oops.

I fixed the mike situation and sat down, defeated, in the chair. I spent the next half hour waiting for the little yellow light by the phone to start blinking. The phone call that was going to be my last act as a professional DJ (because seriously, who is going to hire me?).

The light never fired. The little preacher man and his people packed it up an hour later and left.

I guess they had a listenership of exactly zero because no one called to complain. I had that job for another three months before I was finally let go – but for different reasons.

I wasn’t a “cultural fit”. No shit, Sherlock. I was a long-haired metalhead who wasn’t shy about expressing his disdain for organized religion.

I was surprised they hired me in the first place.

On that same afternoon, my attorney Mike Godwin sent their counsel the following email:

Dear Mr. Goldstein-Gureff,

Please be advised that my client, Brandon Harris, disputes your trademark-infringement claim in every particular.

That is the most polite way to state how vigorously we dispute your attempt to assert flat ownership of the word “gaijin,” a word so well-established in English that it is an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Currently, I’m advising my client to publicize your demand letter, so that the entire game-consuming public will be made aware of your client’s overreaching trademark assertions. In addition, we will of course continue to make clear that Brandon Harris’s website in no way gives rise to any kind of marketplace confusion of the sort that American trademark law is designed to address.

In the interests of allowing you and your client to gracefully retract your claim, we have chosen to refrain from publicizing your demand until you respond to this message, provided that you respond no later than close-of-business Monday. Since I am currently in DC, Eastern time applies.

–Mike Godwin

P.S. I understand that your clients are possibly Russian nationals. You may wish to explain to them the scope and limitations of the Lanham Act in the United States.

–MG

As the time granted to Mr. Goldstein-Gureff has expired, I am publishing this information.

The text of their letter is as follows, with contact information removed.

International Legal Counsels PC
[Contact information redacted]
Re: Trademark Infringement by Gaijin.com

Dear Mr. Harris:

Our firm represents Gaijin Entertainment Corporation (“Gaijin”). Gaijin is a well-known game development company that specializes in creating video games for various platforms (PlayStation3/Xbox 360/iOS/PC). Gaijin is the biggest independent PS3, Xbox 360 and iOS games developer in the Russia Federation and an official partner of Activision, 505 Games, Microsoft, TopWare Interactive, SouthPeak Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment, 1C Company, Apple and many others. Gaijin’s games have received a range of media and game industry awards including such KRI Awards as “Best Simulation Game,” “Best Technology,” “Best sound” and many more. Gaijin also owns, among other intellectual property, a U.S. trademark registration “GAIJIN” (Reg. No. 4,037,227) (“Gaijin Mark”).

It came to our attention that you registered and maintain a website www.kingofnovember.com (“Infringing Website”) that infringes Gaijin Mark. By maintaining and offering to public your content via the website, i.e., Infringing Website, having the same domain as Gaijin Mark, you create consumer confusion and mistake as to the source, sponsorship and/or affiliation of the
Infringing Website and Gaijin, thereby infringing Gaijin Mark. Consequently, the main purpose of this letter is to demand that you immediately cease and desist from maintaining and offering your content via the Infringing Website or any other site having the domain substantially similar to Gaijin Mark. Gaijin also demands that you immediately transfer the Infringing Domain to Gaijin.

If you wish to amicably resolve this matter, we should hear from you not later than five days from the date of this letter regarding the demands listed above. Should we not receive your response that would be satisfactory to our client, we intend to undertake all legal actions and seek statutory and actual damages (including punitive damages and attorneys’ fees) afforded to our client under applicable law and equity, including, without limitation, pursuant to ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

This letter is written for the purpose of bringing to an end the illegal activities described above and with a view of potential settlement of our client’s claims and may not be used by you for any other purpose whatsoever without our written consent. Our client reserves all rights granted to it by law and specifically reserves the right to withdraw any offers before they are
accepted or before any payments are made and to avail itself of any enforcement, legal action or relief available to him in law or equity. Additionally, this letter is without prejudice to all further rights our client or its publishers, licensors or licensees may have, including, without limitation, rights to injunctive relief, profits, damages, statutory damages, royalties and attorney’s fees. Should you have any questions, please address any communications regarding this matter to us as follows:

Leo V. Goldstein-Gureff, Esq.

[Contact information redacted]