"I Don't Like"

Do you think the majority of people have an easier time coming up with things they dislike than with those that they enjoy, appreciate, or look forward to?

Do you think that, even if that number were in balance, that the people who claim to like such-and-such, especially the kind of people one used to call a Pollyanna but who have become complicated and often religious, actually feel, on the whole, that their likes are weightier than their hatreds, dreads, and sorrows?

You know that my answers are yes and no, respectively.

I wanted to say that the egg video is mainly an audio track with (here) low resolution and poorly lit (fluorescent) ambiance. It was not meant to say anything in particular except that I think everyone should roll hard-boiled eggs around and see what they come up with. Maybe I'm just interested in eggs, either from a snake's point of view (I do eat chickens, after all, out of habit) or that of a caretaker of egg-making animals.

It's late, and I have encountered a great many things today (yesterday/Friday) that I did not like. Large, small, inconsequential inconveniences, and time-consuming trying encounters. I have to be at a museum in about eight hours … for school … my group of four has been directed along with the others to go and choose four artworks about which we're taking up two short essays. It might be only two, actually, and we then choose one. So I guess this teacher cares for comparing what people come up with. There's another blechier project due near the end. Something about a problem, a PowerPoint, dear grouchiness, and a final paper. I haven't made anything but a haphazard bibliography in a long time. Actually, probably never, as I tend to be a fishing researcher, and this class seems to be about teaching us to be discerning, but in a particular way.

The wall of Academia is visible again, and I still do not like it, though some of its decorations have improved; by that poor metaphor, I mean that technology has made it quicker and more comprehensive to find "quality sources." I guess journalists aren't experts enough (even with an informed opinion — and it occurs to me that the teacher, who was an early advisor of mine, referred to my being a critic, in public, when I was merely in a prelude to the "introduce yourself" part of the class; I knew what I meant to say — I had taken notes; you know I can't do anything without writing something down, but she may have meant no harm, being a somewhat sketchy and quick talker, starting sentences she diverts from midway, somewhat like someone else I know). But no matter; I don't really have anything I do care about in art history; and it was odd — so many of the women in the class (they were all women) expressed interest in 18th century France or ancient Western art, which is boring to me. There was one person with tri-colored hair who had taken an incomplete the previous semester and just had to sit in and do the work now, though and then could graduate. She flatly stated, "I am not going on in art history; I'm not interested in anything." I am glad I'm not in her group; I didn't see who she teamed up with.

I got two people who were geographically next to me, as well as the girl across the arc who made eye contact with me and who was the only other person I recall as being interested in architecture, albeit construction and fabrication methods. Still, she was smart and had a well-spoken introduction. I think I might have sounded stupid; I will not quote myself, though I do remember what I said. I have notes, after all and it was only the other night.

And I am cooperative and cheerful and will come up with something to write about eventually; the thesis is years away, unless I can mentally, financially, and temporally fit more than two courses into a year's worth of time.

Anyway, I'll let you know what boring pictures we pick. I don't like being limited to committee choices.

Do you?

I like eggs

Low Skyline of DC

Laid Back

Lots of people are waiting for for 65 so they can sit back and not ever work again.

I guess I'm glad I've been working that time into my life as I go.

I am not saving anything.

So far.

It's kind of a silly joke. I don't appreciate enough what they above me have done for me.

I have never worked for a company that had a pension — except when I was in Japan. Once I worked for a religious organization, and they had something, too. I suppose I was silly to blow those few thousand dollars. But it was the 90s, and my parents were not involved in the decisions, and there had not been the kind of subliminal training that drove me to put "it" "somewhere."

Of course now it's more like 70.

Lemurs got frozen fruit; random dialogue is fun

Well, I never

I miss expressions that don't use the word "fuck" — or that require a bit more thought than simply sneering:

Gone to pieces.

Give a hang.

All broke up on you.

I shouldn't wonder.

A: "We never go out any more."

B: "You're just a head in a rusty metal box."

A: "If you had been more careful, I wouldn't be just a head in a rusty metal box."*

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

— except that I gave up dancing about five years ago.

It was a wide but brief window.

We're all wondering whether the blogging window also is on the list to be shuttered.

Unlike an old building, it won't deteriorate upon abandonment; however, like Miss Doxie, Diary of a Mad Brown Woman, BiblioBoy, etc., untended blogs may be retained as archives, but they won't be consulted.

I rarely even read anything old that I've written, much less all your words of wisdom or the hundreds of articles I've bookmarked or cut-and-pasted into text files … or downloaded as a student from JStor and other databases …

Reading old paper-based diaries proves consistently to be depressing and repulsive. I know now why my mother burned hers, why it upset me, and why I both wish to burn and probably will not … so much now is electronic; it will survive "all" but easy cyberwarfare.

Does the world really need more information from me? Granted, unlike manufacturing anything but recorded verbal ideas, writing doesn't tax the world much; it does not add to much pollution — one can use recycled paper and pencils, after all, instead of relying on available electricity (non-solar — you can read a Kindle in the sun, but you still need power; books use power to be produced … all the tree-moving and processing and inking and re-distribution, so many trucks; I so would like to know the environmental impact of our books … book-carbon-footprint). The weight of words in our information age is diminished by dilution. Even our static thoughts, thoughts recorded, are mere blowing puffs.

My point is that I don't have much to say.

To clarify, I have lots of experiences that I could indulge myself in recording, but I doubt their narrative value to others as well as their usefulness to me. And my greater desire is to be humorous, which is funny in itself — I can not translate life into funny stories. (I haven't given much time to trying that : )

Additionally, the things I want most to talk about are exceedingly private the more public my professional persona becomes. Already there are plenty of things I can't say on Facebook. Today I want to complain about being undercut. That's about as much detail I can provide. Tossing in this idiom may help elucidate: If you snooze, you lose.

Please note that it is only the appearance of sleep, and there is certainly no rest involved. I maintain that there is nothing wrong with refusing to be forced to volunteer. I am not one of those good people. I recall a few semi-voluntary giving-of-time sessions, and also one willing and rewarding one, and a number of repeated-event forced ones that seem to have turned me off from unrenumerative uses of my time that involve having to please others instead of just solely myself.

Asking more and providing less. Great recipe; would rather be at the zoo — it's Wild, Wacky and Wet Wednesday, and they are giving the animals ice and other frozen treats all day long! $2 admission, $2 hotdogs, $2 train rides!

*Saturday Night Live c. 1990.