Eccentric Flower:199905/fortunes and glamour
From Eccentric Flower
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may twelfth fortunes and glamour I don't read fortune cookies. When I'm in a Chinese restaurant I don't bother to open mine; I give it to someone else. Nope, not for the reasons you think. Reason one is that people seem to delight in making a minor fuss over these little slips of paper - insisting that everyone at the table read them aloud and so forth. Maybe I'm no fun, but I don't like that game, so I politely abstain. Reason two is that fortune cookies are way inauthentic (they originated in San Francisco) and not very good to eat. I mean, I like them, but they're sugar wafers. I'd rather end a nice Chinese meal with an almond cookie, which is tastier and more accurate. We don't eat chop suey any more, having seen through that; why do we still eat fortune cookies? Because we seem to like making a fuss over them. See reason one. - - - No, Molly, that is not going to segue into the Zodiac rant, which (like the next installment on weddings) I am still saving up the energy to write. The only reason I was thinking of fortune cookies at all is that if I had one yesterday morning, it might have given me a hint that yesterday would be the day of Wasted Time in Non-Useful Tasks. Then again, I'm not sure a fortune cookie is permitted to actually say anything helpful. - - - Yesterday I thought I'd make a few adjustments to Ivy so I could send the code to some people who had asked for it. Not only did I realize I couldn't make it "user-friendly" enough to send out ... I spent several hours on it before reaching that conclusion. I hate tinkering on something if I can't show tangible benefit for it at the end of the session. And now I have to write these people and explain that they can't have Ivy because there's a very tricky change one has to make in the guts of the program to customize it, one I can't simplify. If they knew Perl well, I'd hand it over without a thought, but they don't. Then I went to Mouth, the mouth organ message system. I really want to overhaul Mouth. It's showing its age. I want to reformat the pages and make the whole thing a little easier to maintain. Then I want to make a copy of the whole system and adapt it for an impudence.com project - not that I know how to publicize the two projects which are already there! I spent over an hour doing some minor reformatting and cleanup to the message pages, and then realized - frustratedly - that I'd have to give the Mouth system several days I don't have in order to do the things I want. Also, to make any changes, I have to take the system down (preventing people from posting), and mouth organ is just high-traffic enough that I don't like doing that. People complain. I thought about putting a message system here. Having gotten about forty wedding emails and twenty Geocities emails, the idea that "wouldn't it be interesting if these people could see each others' comments?" keeps getting stronger and stronger. But I must overhaul Mouth first. - - - So I wasted the afternoon on ultimately useless pursuits, when I could have been working on more productive things. (Oh, and I found I'd messed up some of the journal stuff over on impudence, which annoyed me because I feel like I have a responsibility to keep that working right - others are depending on it. The fact that it was a ten-second fix didn't help my mood.) I didn't leave early. I didn't go shopping. I finally got up from my desk at six, unenthusiastic for anything. Then I compounded the problem via my own folly. I went to the mall anyway. I was desperate to get my film developed that night - it's been sitting around for several days because I keep forgetting it - and that was the closest one-hour place. Unfortunately, that meant I had to wander around the mall for an hour. Not a good thing when I'm already low. I went to Structure - a place that sometimes has interesting things, but mostly exists to reinforce my idea that women get all the good clothes. I was unimpressed with the stock, and when the frat-boy-looking male salesclerk approached me, that was the last straw. I do not like male salespersons. I am somewhat biased against men in general, but with salesmen it is strongest. I will at least give a female salesbeing the chance to make her pitch (well, not on the phone - I am an equal-opportunity hanger-upper). But men - nope; I'll have none of that. Part of this is that I perceive men as being intrinsically hostile to me, like they're making fun of me in their head. It enhances my opinion of men as essentially combative creatures, which is the single thing I dislike most about that gender. Call it an unpleasant reminder. (I'm sure it's all my imagination, but never mind that.) Next I wandered by Glamour Shots, which was another case of Not What I Needed. I know, I know, the place probably disgusts you (Nonelvis won't walk past it), but where else can one get a cheap temporary makeover and posing session? The problem, of course, is that I'm sure they won't take kindly to my type. I spent some time in there, leafing through all the sample photos wistfully. Had there been a woman there, I might - might! - have summoned up the courage to explain what I secretly wanted. But the entire staff consisted of two seedy-looking men. ("Seedy-looking" in men sometimes refers to shifty eyes, sometimes to other biases I won't offend you by revealing, but usually it means razor stubble. I have seen maybe three men in history who can wear stubble and have it look good, and all three were movie stars who look good under all circumstances anyway.) - - - By this point, I was well and truly in a funk. I was thinking about having a drink, but one should never drink when one is depressed. It sets bad precedent, and it'll just make you more depressed. I did the correct thing: I got a coffee and a small box of Godiva chocolates and a copy of Glamour and sat in a cosy armchair at the coffee house reading it until the endorphins kicked in and I felt much better. See? Happiness is easy - it's just a matter of finding the correct drugs. - - - I was cheerful enough when I got home that I didn't mind that the photo project got way out of hand and ate what was left of the evening and I have nothing yet to show for it. Another unproductive pursuit - no results. The problem is that I have big schemes, wonderful schemes, but I rarely have the time to do them justice. Writing works because I can do it in fits and starts and pick up where I left off. If I leave off in the middle of a web page design, I'll probably never come back to it - it's got to be done in a single go or it won't get done. And that's just not feasible for anything but the smallest projects. This is why the interactive story machine - as much a web project as a writing project - has still got nothing to show, after all this time. Fortunately, I can usually comfort myself by remembering that no one but me cares much if this stuff ever sees the light of day. That sounds more bitter than was intended. What I mean is: With mouth organ, people are watching, and that makes it much harder, because I can't leave anything unfinished in public view. Here I can say "there'll be more Clios when they happen," and no one will fuss about it. All right, enough about this. Work to do.
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