Eccentric Flower:199901/white rabbits tuesday coats and too much data
From Eccentric Flower
«January 1999 «Eccentric Flower
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twenty-nine january white rabbits, tuesday coats, and too much data Today is payday. I never did get a check from Playboy for the article and I wonder what the polite way is to say "Nonelvis got hers and the Postal Trolls ate mine, may I please have another?" I don't know that there is a polite way. Speaking of the Post Office, now that there's money I really should go down and rent a box. Mouth organ mail is getting to be a regular occurrence and we'd rather not give some of those deviates our house address. A brilliant day today. Blinding, in fact. I was halfway to work and wished I'd gotten my dark glasses from the glove compartment of the car. We have so few days where it's both snowy and sunny that we tend to forget how bright the snow can be. A nice powder, no wetness or icing yet, dry, clear, crisp, and cold. There are many devout skiers taking sick days today, I imagine. - - - I have a bad habit, one I suspect you may share: I buy clothes sometimes with the full knowledge that I will never have a place to wear them. I was thinking a little last night about the Tuesday Weld coat. This is a huge, extravagant, jet-black fake fur coat which is a problem not so much because of its femininity (although it is) but its dressiness - it's for a fancy party or the opera or some such. I have worn it once, over a very elaborate ensemble built around a full-length vinyl dress - fetish clothing has as many weird and arbitrary rules as evening wear does, you know. But my opportunities for wearing vinyl dresses are even fewer than for the coat, so that's not likely to happen again soon. I have vowed to wear this coat outdoors in public at some point this winter - I'm just waiting for the opportunity to arise. We call it the Tuesday Weld coat because it looks like the one in the picture of Tuesday Weld that's on the cover of the Matthew Sweet album Girlfriend. Just so you'll have a visual reference point. I look a little intimidating in it, I'm sure, but then, I look intimidating in a vinyl dress, too. - - - My links page needs updating. I have so many great new sites to read that I'm having to stagger them. "Today I'll read X, Y, and Z. Tomorrow I'll read A, B, and C and catch up." The problem with that plan, of course, is that delayed gratification is not a strength of mine. Random thoughts from today's crop of journals: Aussie talks about Sixties music. I have an odd, after-the-fact perspective there, Aus - and I have to disagree with you on the Jefferson Airplane album; I like "White Rabbit" a lot more than "Somebody to Love." Not because of the drug references, which were trite even then, but because of the way the song starts out deathly quiet and builds up to the point where Grace Slick is almost screaming. Her voice has always been the only thing that interested me about that band. As for Hair, I have mixed emotions. Hair brings out my mean side: I listen to it and find myself thinking "Were they really that idealistic and spacey?" On the other hand, Hair is nastily subversive when it's not being touchy-feely. It may be idealistic, but it's not naive. It should come as no surprise that the evil songs in Hair are the ones I like best; "Air," which is about pollution, is my favorite. It pops into my head at the oddest times. Anita talks about wearable computing a little, linking to this character. Anita, I hate to say it, but I hope wearables don't catch on. I see this guy walking around all the time - he's a well-known and obvious figure here. (I recall the display in his glasses as much more obvious than in that photo - big ol' clumsy gizmo on the side of his face - the photo may have been done with a normal pair of glasses for effect.) Every time I see him I think - okay, well, first I think, "Goodness, what an übergeek!" but then I get over that, and I think, "Now, why would someone consider that desirable?" Put aside questions of geekiness - after all, the technology will get steadily more invisible and socially acceptable, so don't mind my crankiness. Think of this as a larger-scale objection instead. Why would you need information that constantly? We have too much connectivity as it is now. It is now possible for us to wander the entire country, on foot, in a car, on horseback, whatever, and never be out of telephone contact. When I see people who carry their cellular phone everywhere, I think, "There are very few people who are as important as these people think they are." We have a cell phone. We use it for car trips and when I'm tying up the main line on the computer. The financial and technical bar to the internet gets lower and lower; people are getting email whom I would have bet never would. I consider that a good thing - internet for everybody! But there's a top bar as well, or should be. Why do you need to check your email from anywhere? OK, on a long trip you want to make alternate arrangements, I buy that. But this is different. What sort of facts do you need, what sort of information do you need, that you must have it instantly on-demand? The only people I can think of who might benefit from a pair of these glasses are people who must make rapid-fire decisions based on an ever-changing flow of information. Brokers. Dispatchers. Ticket agents. That doesn't include most of us. Ultimately, it comes down to religion. I see too many people in this town already who think that getting from point A to point B is a waste of time; they want to read or do something "constructive" while they're in the process of Getting There. I am occasionally guilty - I read on the subway a lot. But the times when I don't read, just watch the faces and the bodies, are as entertaining as when I'm in a book somewhere. I have seen this gent, walking around with his computer in his glasses, and he's in a daze. The computer has his attention, not the world. I could strip in front of him and he wouldn't notice - and the sight of me stripping should be enough to make most humans run in terror. I think when you're walking, you should notice the world around you. I keep thinking back to the story of the invisible city in The Phantom Tollbooth. When I'm queen of the universe, that book will be required reading. And cell phones will be illegal in public.
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