Day: August 13, 2001

You can all have fun quoting the crazy phrases that show up in your search-engine logs, but I would like to offer a few of the zany entries from some forms I’m creating at work today:

• Shaft Stiffness Ratio
• Coupling Guard [Like a crossing guard?]
• Mechanical Seal Gland
• Non-Spark Coupling Guard Required [Typical, just typical]
• Throat Bushing Required
• Throttle Bushing
• Barrier Flush Plan

Yes, it’s that dull a day that I have to look for naughty humor just to pass the time.

Sparky’s World Tour 2001, possibly coming to your town soon:

Aug. 17–20 Washington, D.C.
Sep. 1–2 Goshen, NY
Sep. 12–16 Denver, CO
Sep. 22–30 San Francisco, CA
Oct. 18–22 Reykjavik, Iceland
Nov. 16–26 London and Lancaster, England

In order to facilitate all this travel, I will not be spending money or eating during the interim. Please be advised and adjust plans for our social engagements accordingly.

We’ll start with a quick quote from a towering literary figure:

But it’s not me so much as my brain. My brain just sits up there, reporting back to me, clicking on and on like ticker tape. Sometimes it feels like my brain is smarter than I am. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want. My brain just goes on and on relentlessly, expanding to space.

Carrie Fisher, Surrender the Pink

I’ve been a little down on myself, berating myself for not writing much here that showed any insight or revelation. It dawned on me, though, that I just take stuff like that for granted, so I just don’t think to share once I sit down to post. My brain, fidgety thing that it is, is constantly processing what I read and watch and do and remember, and constantly spitting out minor revelations, or at least the raw material for them, which usually take shape the moment I turn my attention back toward a particular subject. I’m often surprised when I start to talk about some damn thing or another, and discover that I seem to be able to piece together a reasonable opinion. (Except when asked about any or all of those things that have never crossed my mind, which usually prompt me to raise my eyebrows quizzically and exclaim, “Hmmm, I have no idea at all.” I don’t like to fake opinions.)

Here are a few recycled thoughts, then — ideas usually shared in conversation or pondered during heat-crazed walks around town:

• • Exhausting as my social calendar has been, I still really like the idea that the widespread Homo Blog Clique has forged so many links here in the analog world. Getting to know the people behind the blogs adds new and exciting dimension to what they write, just as familiarity with their writing makes getting to know the people easier once you meet them. It is a clique, of course, the natural result of a filtering process we all go through as we browse around and link and bookmark and then weed out all the sites that don’t hold our interest after a while. Just like in the normal world, we formed a big clique based on shared obsessions, experiences, respect, or circumstances. The thing is, an internet clique casts a wider net, catching a wider variety of fish. Clique we may be, of some kind or another, but it’s certainly one made up of an extraordinary variety of interesting people. It’s incredibly self-indulgent, though, to keep writing about meeting each other. It’s OK. I guess, but still self-indulgent.
  • I’m perfectly willing to let run-of-the-mill Hollywood movies play me like a fiddle, but I can only take so much. I love action movies and period movies and all that stuff that is so emotionally manipulative, that practically writes itself after the initial exposition. Doesn’t bug me — I’m sometimes there just to have entertainment spoon-fed to me, and that’s fine. They’re so easy, though, that they set me up for the thrill of seeing films that catch me off-guard and really make me think, laugh, or gasp in sublime shock. that’s a lot of added value, baby. Ghost World, for instance, was so brilliant because I found myself laughing moments later, once the dark and sublime jokes had a chance to sink in and stew. And it ended without any real resolution, an honest and courageous way to end a movie that more Hollywood movies should be willing to try. Things in life don’t always end in nicely resolved circumstances. It’s a lazy convention of theater and film and literature to tidy up everything that’s been written, instead of ending on a note of an unkown, unknowable future to come. Sometime a pat ending is right for the story, sometimes (and I’m thinking especially of A.I. here) it’s an enormous effort spent to do what’s expected when ending the story without wrapping it all up would have been more thought-provoking and more satisfying.
  • It’s been a wild since I’ve really had a crush on someone. I miss those. I miss that feeling of desperate lust and fascination, that kind of primal longing and fluttering of the heart. A good crush is bittersweet. It’s also good copy. I like to think the drought has nothing to do with my getting old and jaded, and just more to do with me not meeting anyone that extraordinary recently.