Tag Archives: sunshine

Trying to get back on the horse, or some other cliche

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I’ve been mildly and definitely unhealthily obsessed with one person recently. Mostly because she’s an idiot, or boring, or possibly worst of all, both.  
 
I like to play a game in my head — would you rather be stupid or boring? I’ve always wanted to be stupid. Many people might say I have undoubtedly succeeded in that goal.  
 
Imagine the happiness of always living up to people’s expectations, given that they don’t expect much. But, boring, dull, plodding, conventional, plain, run-of-the-mill? Where’s the fun in that?  
  
My obsession has extorted me to act more “normal.” Apart from having my itty bitty feelings hurt, seriously, I did, I kind of just wanted to punch her. It’s a curse, I think, that mainstream folks who meet me feel compelled to give me solid advice like be more normal. Apart from missing the obvious note that I don’t have any desire to be like them, they want me in their camp.  
 
Why? I can’t imagine. I’d truly be a shitty foot soldier in their regimental army.  
 
I had an epiphany brought on this week not just by the woman over whom I obsess, but an equal character who was giving M. unsolicited advice. The aha moment was that a lot of people around our age suck. They suck in a very specific, very boring way.  
  
Here’s the breakdown. 20 year olds, your average young adult set, know how to have fun. Pretty much, drinking, fucking, eating when theyre hungry, getting their first apartments, hanging out, learning how shit works. They are annoying as fuck, because they think they have a lot of answers that they in fact don’t, but they got the fun part down or at least know how to try new things.  
 
Early, mid-30 somethings are maybe a sweet spot. The douchebaggery of 20+ has mellowed, but the going out on a Thursday night, because that’s when the weekend starts, or renting a vacation cabin with relative strangers is still doable. Plus, by then with a tad more security and disposable income, there are many more fun things to do.  
  
And, the seniors, so fucking many of them now are partying it up like life really does begin at 60. I know someone who got her first tattoo at 65. Other folks are taking college classes, traveling, selling the family homestead to keep it light and flexible. I’ve had some great conversations that basically have the subtext of fuck it, I’m old, it’s now or never and let the assholes judge.  
 
What’s missing in that chronology are my peers — lets say maybe hovering around 40 on up to 50 something. Sweet Jesus on a Popsicle stick, we, as a demographic, suck.  
 
The object of my obsession fits neatly in the group. She has a list of foods longer than Wilt Chamberlain’s dick plus another 7 feet that she can’t eat. They are fattening, bad for you, too inorganic, stomach upsetting, have too many ingredients, weird, unknown, new, contain alcohol, cholesterol, fat, sugar, chemical additives, and are gassy, bloated, rich, poor, and just out and out bad. The only thing safe is salad – no dressing – and a cracker washed down with water no ice. Followed by a sliver so narrow of dark chocolate that more calories are burnt in the shaving of the morsel than gained in the eating. Further calories are burnt in the endless recriminations and self-flagellation for tempting the fat fates with such a taste.  
 
I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about someone else’s food hang ups, but by god I wish those people so obsessed would shut the fuck up about it. You know what I don’t need when I’m grabbing an afternoon Diet Coke and M&Ms? Someone reminding me I’m going to die.  
  
 
Better yet, maybe with the bloat and the chemicals, I’m actually puffed up enough like a marshamallow that I’m not as wrinkled as the sour pusses of my peers. Chemical preservatives keep me young. That and the blood of virgins.  
 
I guess the whole point is, why are the miserable, dull folks in the world trying to enlist? They should all stay home and frown over a careful, tepid broiled chicken breast. It leaves more for me and my kind to enjoy 
 

The curse of fine weather

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It’s a gorgeous day outside these four walls. but this time of year, it’s often a gorgeous day. consequently, i’m lazy.

Back in the cold of Cambridge, if there was a day like today, it was almost required to drop everything and soak up some vitamin D. You never knew if rain would inevitably rain on your parade, proverbially or actually, or if another crisis was around the corner. It was almost required to make hay when the sun was shining, and clearly that cliche came from a dank and drizzly corner of the world.

By the way, with that link to Boston’s latest dilemma, I’m beginning to think my old town is becoming Egypt of the Bible days. When will the locusts and frogs descend?

Here I am, safely drinking unboiled water after harvesting today’s lemon crop in my back yard, and I’m OK being indoors. It makes me feel guilty, all the while I know that statistical days of sunshine are greatly in my favor here.

I’m not a complete and utter slug of sloth, to mix a metaphor. I’m on laundry load three, the dishwasher has been loaded, run and unloaded, and a fresh shower curtain now hangs anew. I have not played in the sunshine.

Walt Whitman I am not.

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

I know not of these emotions. Not today.

The anti-Whitman, but not like in an Emersonian way or anything cool like that, I have succeeded in making my iPad into essentially a thin client.

Through the automagic of network computing, I can look at the desktop of one of my home computers, and tunnel into the files and do whatever the hell I want. Better yet, that desktop is connected to my backup disk with pretty much all of my data goodness, files galore I can now retrieve and manipulate iPad in hand.

As an aside, I was a total, arrogant douchebag to a chick at the boxing viewing party we went to last night. Fascinated to play with our new toys, after a while the woman declared the iPad inferior to her Mac Air (sheesh, talk about expensive toy), because it’s all about “access.” So, click click, I showed her my home desktop at my virtual fingertips.

Apart from party douchebaggery and braggadocio along with just seeing if I could actually do it, there is some method to my geek madness. It’s rooted in the black, dark days of my early foray into weblogging bullshit.

You see, one thing my old employer tried to do in trying to show me as the ill-will driven loon they needed me to be was to show I was using their computers and time to fiddle in my shitty craft. I hadn’t been, apart from the odd lunch hour (my time) or quick comment, but they tried, oh lordy-lord, they tried.

(Internet tip # 5,376, if you are going to ‘blog on the company dime, don’t date stamp your entries. I use Splee’s Fuzzy DateTime WordPress plugin. Thank you Lee McFadden and the development community on the world wide web for humanizing my time away from the actual precision my computer could be reporting. Nothing like “wee hours” or “today” to confound the time police.)

This job, therefore, one can’t even get to my website from their network. The IP address is blocked for all and sundry and their peering eyes, myself included.

It’s been a convenient excuse for my general malaise and writer’s block. Despite my boss’s own verbal notice that I SHOULD write in my down time and not to worry about the man’s keeping me down, I have kept off my own playground. No risk, no questions, no complaints, the lessons I took from my last gig.

Now, though, technology might give me a boost and perhaps switch off that writer’s block. During stolen daylight minutes when I am not too tired and eager to doze on the couch lulled by the TV, maybe I can write a little bit.

Tunneling to my own playground on my own equipment located 40 miles from work, I could have an out-of-body writing experience privately. We’ll see how it goes, but the man can’t be keeping my data down.

Random in Cali

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I’m actually writing this completely horizontally on my iPhone. I should be sleeping.

By the way, like the big douche with disposable income I am, I did upgrade to the faster phone. It’s M.’s fault or maybe his company’s. They gave him the latest in corporate tethering, aka a Blackberry.

So, at the mall to buy a bag worthy to hold two cell phones, there was nary a line and about 15 minutes later we had new toys.

Anyway this picture if it comes out was on my walk to work. I couldn’t resist free apricots.

photo