Dude of Gravity
Dang, but I need to change my name: mine is indeed a bloatee, one that hides a multitude of chins.
Anyway: I began to write a post the other day but I quickly ran out of steam, so it quietly simpered away while I did something more useful, or at least renumerative. It began:
There's only so much ranting one can do, I find, before the brain is overwhelmed by the enormity of misdeed and the tinyness of self. It simply shuts down, asking itself What's the point? Time for this little pit of the - ugh - blogosphere - to return to the humdrum trivia of its everyday life. I've done a lot of ranting these past couple of weeks; fortunately for all most of it mental and off-line, with occasional tremulous vocal outbursts. full of sound and fury, signifying... well, all that.
I do so hate the word "blog" - or 'Blog as Damian the Pootergeek insists on writing. It is such an ugly word which, unable to keep its dongle in its pants, has spawned a thousand ugly children. I think "blawg" - signifying a law blog - that is the child I detest most, and that somebody - probably a Lawprof - deserves to be taken outside and shagged with the big-end of a ragman's trumpet for coining it. Not that I coined that phrase either - it came from an old friend, one I haven't heard from in many years. He was one of that brand of character of whom people at work would keep a ledger of sayings or malapropisms uttered at some point? He - call him JB - was a sayings guy - little peaches like "Shitty death!" or "Slotted labour" (women workers); whereas another - call him JD was a malaprop who would talk about "the Forth road rail bridge", which I suppose you have to be a local to find very funny? Characters sadly lacking here in America, at least in my limited experience. They probably do exist, in every company, just no longer within my workplace bubble: there is in fact a very funny commerical running for FedEx featuring just one such guy - "We don't get french benefits?" - so I know they exist somewhere? But how bland, how poor, is life at work without one.
Another good reason for discarding The Rant is that I very quickly regret them: it is the realization that I, who thinks himself a happy-go-lucky, irreligious non-judgemental man o'the world, can so easily read like the worst of pious purse-lipped moralizers, puffed in extremis like a bloateed Church Lady? Tut tut tut. Nobody needs that.
No: the reason I quoted myself [writing to myself, of course], the reason I thrust this drivel upon you at all was not at all to show you how great a piece it would have been, how superior an argument you thereby missed-out on, but rather it was that while writing said fluffery I reminded myself of my "Fatso's Friday Morning Fuxit" idea. It's been squeaking in the background for a looooong time, but I don't think I've ever made it public before? But I like this idea; it plays to my strengths.
I realize it demands a commitment from me that I might not always be able to make, namely to write something every Friday, but I fancy giving it a go? An experiment, even?
To make it happen requires some customer intervention: I need my readers to posit propositions that I can, somehow, lose for you? You could even take them down the pub afterwards and regail your pals in true Pub-bore fashion.
I'm wait-ing, tap, tap, tap...
[Local People Note: there's a Forth Bridge and there's a Forth Road Bridge, a mile-and-a-half apart. There is no Fourth Bridge, sadly, a mistake many foreigners make, most notably the commander of a US aircraft carrier who collided with one after being instructed to anchor just shy of the Forth Bridge. He'd only counted two]
Anyway: I began to write a post the other day but I quickly ran out of steam, so it quietly simpered away while I did something more useful, or at least renumerative. It began:
<PONTIFICATE type="tiresome">
Far be it for me to disagree with Hitchens - a writer I very much enjoy, and who I often find compellingly persuasive - not that that is saying very much since I am incapable of mounting or sustaining any kind of argument, and am congenitally configured to lose every one? In fact, was a time I fancied writing an occasional Blog Feature of my own, something like "Fatso's Friday Morning Fuxit" or somesuch where you my dear readers would send me your arguments of the day and I would promise to lose them in Three, or mibbe sometimes even Lose That Argument In One!
But you know what I'm trying to say, don't you? If I collected intellectual hero baseball cards, Hitch would be one sealed in plastic. So I am not about to disagree with his piece in Slate this week, which, nutshell, denigrates the proposition that, had we left Saddam alone, New Orleans would have been saved! Read it for yourself - I happen to agree with it, although there are more things under heaven to rant about these days than the perpetual sophistry of Moonbat blogs. Not like they're actually in charge of anything, is it? Not like they are remotely a Power that fearless Truth needs to be spoken to, hmm?
No. What I've found myself thinking at odd moments is a sort of reverse-orthogonal view: if this is how they've managed Katrina, what the hell have they done in Iraq? New Orleans: the rose-tinted view of Baghdad. It's that whole "path strewn with petals" thing - the immeasurable incompetence that has so far ruined one of the few Good Things that bozon ever did.
Blah...blah...blah...
</PONTIFICATE>
Far be it for me to disagree with Hitchens - a writer I very much enjoy, and who I often find compellingly persuasive - not that that is saying very much since I am incapable of mounting or sustaining any kind of argument, and am congenitally configured to lose every one? In fact, was a time I fancied writing an occasional Blog Feature of my own, something like "Fatso's Friday Morning Fuxit" or somesuch where you my dear readers would send me your arguments of the day and I would promise to lose them in Three, or mibbe sometimes even Lose That Argument In One!
But you know what I'm trying to say, don't you? If I collected intellectual hero baseball cards, Hitch would be one sealed in plastic. So I am not about to disagree with his piece in Slate this week, which, nutshell, denigrates the proposition that, had we left Saddam alone, New Orleans would have been saved! Read it for yourself - I happen to agree with it, although there are more things under heaven to rant about these days than the perpetual sophistry of Moonbat blogs. Not like they're actually in charge of anything, is it? Not like they are remotely a Power that fearless Truth needs to be spoken to, hmm?
No. What I've found myself thinking at odd moments is a sort of reverse-orthogonal view: if this is how they've managed Katrina, what the hell have they done in Iraq? New Orleans: the rose-tinted view of Baghdad. It's that whole "path strewn with petals" thing - the immeasurable incompetence that has so far ruined one of the few Good Things that bozon ever did.
Blah...blah...blah...
</PONTIFICATE>
There's only so much ranting one can do, I find, before the brain is overwhelmed by the enormity of misdeed and the tinyness of self. It simply shuts down, asking itself What's the point? Time for this little pit of the - ugh - blogosphere - to return to the humdrum trivia of its everyday life. I've done a lot of ranting these past couple of weeks; fortunately for all most of it mental and off-line, with occasional tremulous vocal outbursts. full of sound and fury, signifying... well, all that.
I do so hate the word "blog" - or 'Blog as Damian the Pootergeek insists on writing. It is such an ugly word which, unable to keep its dongle in its pants, has spawned a thousand ugly children. I think "blawg" - signifying a law blog - that is the child I detest most, and that somebody - probably a Lawprof - deserves to be taken outside and shagged with the big-end of a ragman's trumpet for coining it. Not that I coined that phrase either - it came from an old friend, one I haven't heard from in many years. He was one of that brand of character of whom people at work would keep a ledger of sayings or malapropisms uttered at some point? He - call him JB - was a sayings guy - little peaches like "Shitty death!" or "Slotted labour" (women workers); whereas another - call him JD was a malaprop who would talk about "the Forth road rail bridge", which I suppose you have to be a local to find very funny? Characters sadly lacking here in America, at least in my limited experience. They probably do exist, in every company, just no longer within my workplace bubble: there is in fact a very funny commerical running for FedEx featuring just one such guy - "We don't get french benefits?" - so I know they exist somewhere? But how bland, how poor, is life at work without one.
Another good reason for discarding The Rant is that I very quickly regret them: it is the realization that I, who thinks himself a happy-go-lucky, irreligious non-judgemental man o'the world, can so easily read like the worst of pious purse-lipped moralizers, puffed in extremis like a bloateed Church Lady? Tut tut tut. Nobody needs that.
No: the reason I quoted myself [writing to myself, of course], the reason I thrust this drivel upon you at all was not at all to show you how great a piece it would have been, how superior an argument you thereby missed-out on, but rather it was that while writing said fluffery I reminded myself of my "Fatso's Friday Morning Fuxit" idea. It's been squeaking in the background for a looooong time, but I don't think I've ever made it public before? But I like this idea; it plays to my strengths.
I realize it demands a commitment from me that I might not always be able to make, namely to write something every Friday, but I fancy giving it a go? An experiment, even?
To make it happen requires some customer intervention: I need my readers to posit propositions that I can, somehow, lose for you? You could even take them down the pub afterwards and regail your pals in true Pub-bore fashion.
I'm wait-ing, tap, tap, tap...
[Local People Note: there's a Forth Bridge and there's a Forth Road Bridge, a mile-and-a-half apart. There is no Fourth Bridge, sadly, a mistake many foreigners make, most notably the commander of a US aircraft carrier who collided with one after being instructed to anchor just shy of the Forth Bridge. He'd only counted two]
posted by Xenoverse at Thursday, September 08, 2005
4 Comments:
FCB, as Spencer Tracy once said of Catherine Hepburn, "She may be small but she's all choice" (well, actually, he prounced it as "cheerce"). So, it is with your blog; occasional entries but all cheerce. It has not dove into that pile known as blahg.
So, keep up your good works!
Re.: No characters at work. I agree with your partially. We have characters at work, but they are limited in their characterness. In previous jobs, so many previous years ago, we may have had only 1 or 2 characters, but they were packed with twitches of the verbal and personality type. Now, it's as if these 1-2 guys have been all diluted into 6-7 guys. You have to make more visits to get your "character" hit.
All of our pricing decisions are based on "variable" costs, a concept one character translates to be "veritable". When hit with a legal dilemna, another character would moan he's on the "wrong side of that legal claw" (i.e. clause). Exasperation would cause one of our managers to scream, "I took and told you to do....".
Ears are on HIGH alert jsut in case a new employee turns out to be a "character". My feeling is that the establishment of an HR dept sounds the death knell for any potential employee with character.
Re. Friday Muck About Topics: Personally, I enjoy the entries you post about your family the most. Warmth, humour, pity, anger, and finally an across-the-continent loud sigh always come through loud and clear. Anything you write about them is a hoot worth reading and re-reading. A very close second is the tales of Scotland that you roll out on occassion. Sorry that I can't be more specific; I just want to keep your writing fires stoked.
PS.
Love that comic strip you linked to. Am printing it out and surreptitiously placing on some co-worker's desks.
I've re-read my post (becasue I was to lazy to preview it) and found some atrocious spelling & grammer errors. Please forgive me; English is my second tongue (or so I say as a wimpy excuse).
I can't seem to remove my head from my arse when it comes to this proposition, so please parse it in a forthcoming Friday a.m. fuxit: When, exactly, did Rock & Roll die? Because, make no mistake, it's dead. That noise you occasionally hear, sometimes promising, mostly not? That's just gas and fluids escaping the decomposing corpse. There's no hope. It's finished, done, deceased, "Pining for the fjords".
Of course, the route of dignity is to follow Darko's suggestion and speak further of family.
I'm not sure whether anyone in the fambly has read my blog? They know it exists, and they probably know what it is called, but I think they prefer to stay away from it.
In any event, anonymity allows me to tell tales without causing excessive embarassment, which would be unfair.
As to the question "When did Rock 'n Roll die?"... hmmm. Need to think about that one. I can tell you when it died for me - in fact, probably have in one of my "Opera" posts?
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