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2001-02-20 Sometimes I think I could live an isolated life just fine; Internet access in a cabin in the woods; no people around besides someone at the market for food; Sitting there alone, greasy-haired, in a straight-backed chair...writing a manifesto, or something. I only say this because, apparently, I really enjoy having arguments with myself. I certainly do it enough; I'm quite good at them. I no longer require another person to even provide an impetus for them -- someone's sheer existence is enough to set me off on a 10-15 minute dialogue of accusations, arguments, and personal attacks. And no, I don't always win. Has anyone seen my nails and crucifix? I'm feeling an attack coming on. I know I'm being a geek, but this is still kind of neat. For part of this entry, I'm in bed making notes and writing on my little Blackberry keyboard. When I'm done I can just send it to myself and it'll arrive in my inbox tomorrow. Plus it "silently" vibrates when it arrives. If I were a kinkier guy I'd subscribe to a few busy mailing lists... OK, that probably counts as oversharing. The Boyfriend and I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Drag Queen this weekend. It was good, but flawed. (Amateur film critic alert! Eject now!) The story was engaging, the choreography amazing, the dialogue intelligent. Michelle Yeoh rocks the house. But quite frankly towards the end I was really tired of watching the characters literally fly from spot to spot. This is incredible control and training, I get the picture; now can we cut the wires? (Maybe I've just been spoiled by Jackie Chan doing all his own stunts.) The plot was formulaic, and the start-stop of the pacing wasn't uneven per se, but it was still disconcerting. Admittedly, I might have enjoyed the movie more if the man next to us hadn't abandoned his ten-year-old and five-year-old in the aisle of the very crowded theater to crash into the seat next to us, about ten minutes after the movie started. My apologies to parents reading this, as I am childless and admit having little experience dealing with kids. I can also appreciate that must be hard finding babysitters in the City. But having a very young child leaning in over the two of us to tearfully ask Daddy where Mommy was, was a bit distracting. More than once I literally lost my place in the movie, distracted by the family drama in the aisle next to me. Don't even get me started on the commercials before the trailers, the teenagers talking two rows behind us, the chatty 7 year old down the row who kept getting shushed, or the numerous cellphones which, of course, all rang with different electronic songs. The latter is the most egregious -- somehow the sonic landscape of Imperial China is diminished a little when interrupted by a bleepy electronic version of F�r Elise. The audio was amazing, though. Crickets chirped behind me. I was in the middle of a Peking market. And the music? I think Yo-Yo Ma could make me cry by just looking a cello. Again, a flaw -- I hated the song during the credits. Maybe I might like Coco Lee better in Mandarin than in English. Maybe if the song tried less to be "My Heart Will Go On." I can at least give her another try, I suppose. Then, for more fun and excitement, The Boyfriend stopped to buy ice cream at the cheap-o grocery store near my house. I don't like this store. It's dirty, you have to bag your own groceries, and the people who work there are unfriendly. "I suppose I could stay in the car and have a little freakout instead." I joked. But it was open and had what we needed, so, warily, I went in with him. It was just ice cream. So after we were admonished to only get "one or two items 'cause we're closing now," and after the checker berated us for delaying her from clocking out for the day ("You bettah get up here now cause I gotta go home."), we got to walk past a shoplifter making an angry scene after she was nabbed by grocery store security. From the relative safety of the car we saw her animatedly mouth her final pot-shots at the security guy, who threw her bag open and upside-down into the parking lot after yanking it away, searching it and pulling out about $20 in unopened haircare products. "So tell me again why you don't like this store?" The Boyfriend asked. But we saved $1.20! I've gone through a whole day at work with the new leash now. I know I was really positive about it in my last entry; and the technology honeymoon is still on. But I've realised that I now have three places to delete mail from instead of just two like before. I also forgot how much mail I get at work, so the horny little thing buzzes like a Hitachi Magic Wand. But the clincher? Now I'm even more connected to work. How is this is a good thing? Hmmm. Maybe the points made by the Roommate and our close mutual friend are worth thinking about. But at least it's more useful than the pager for work was. What is this, on-call graphic design? That was stupid. I finally hooked up my new printer in the downtime of another DSL outage. Mixed blessings, there. Not only do I need to call our ISP, who doublecharged me this month and re-broke a problem they fixed last month, but also S3 who doublecharged me for my Rio player's (amnesia-prone) memory. Sigh. I had the day from hell again on Friday. I'm going to start calling in sick on Fridays; I should know better by now. Three separate deadlines, three separate crises. Clients were pleased all around, though I may have some sales account reps looking for my head on a pike. (Like that's anything new.) Nobody seemed to notice that I moved a million miles an hour with little notice. But I got a million thanks for the simple hour's worth of work that I did on Monday, when the office was closed. That was nothing. Sure, I'd rather have stayed home, but I didn't do anything difficult -- I pulled out a backup presentation and helped install it. It's all perspective. Some days (maybe, um, like today) it seems like I'm more pumped up on testosterone than other days. I've always meant to track how territorial, how sex-hungry, how aggressive I've felt and compared it to, say, diet, activity, mood, weather, my other psychoses, etc. I always thought it might be interesting see if there's a pattern, but I've never had the follow-through to do it. I've heard that men have a hormonal cycle like women but longer (about 40 days, if I recall correctly) and with much less obvious milestones, but I can't say it was scientific. It'd be interesting, at least, to see if there's really something physical going on when I can't sit still. Either that or I just need to put the Blackberry in a different pocket. _Casey
2003-03-29 - Moving Notice |
