Year: 2005

The social rank of language in these here united states

  1. Senior managers take pride in their inability to write clearly; it shows that they do not have to do work.
  2. Reading, like religion, is now an activity reserved for children, women, and the old. Men in their prime do not read books.
  3. People who speak in complete sentences or, worse, entire paragraphs are labeled as “foreign”, “possibly homosexual” (if male), or “stuck up”.
  4. People who do not read well or speak clearly, but are either wealthy or very religious, are regarded as being wiser than writers or readers.
  5. Poetry has been dead for almost 100 years.
  6. Short short stories, vignettes, and blogs are the largest pieces of text that anyone under 50 wants to consume.
  7. Dialogue in film has been replaced with sound effects.
  8. Inarticulate illiteracy is mistaken for sincerity.

“A scene consists of people who define themselves by being consumers of art.”

Had a nice evening with the female half of bikupan, in which we went over to her neighbor’s house that she’s watching and cooked a meal in their million-dollar kitchen. Mmm, All-Clad cookware. We ate pasta & vegetables which were too bland because I wasn’t paying attention, and drank the bottle of wine I bought, and blathered about stuff. The house itself was very nice on the inside (high ceilings, huge kitchen, etc.) but was inexplicably covered with big fake rocks on the outside, like a Disneyland ride. I got to meet her dad, who is a cool guy.

The strange mixed taste of the neighbors with the fancy house can be summed up thus: They had one of those expensive dishwasher-sized storage things for wine with the controlled temperature and humidity and all built into the kitchen counter. And they had a bottle of two-buck Chuck in it.

Altogether a very good evening talking with her about life the universe and everything. Then of course I looked at my messages and apparently I was supposed to do a build for work at 10:30 and I didn’t, and I hadn’t been explicitly told but I should have known, and I’m going to get fired and have to live in a box in the alley and die of yaws.

Sometimes with the work anxiety I seriously cannot tell whether they’re setting me up to get canned or just have really poor communication systems. Hey! Maybe it’s both! More likely the latter because people are pretty nice there, but I’m wondering what is going to happen still.

Sunday is the auto show. I have tickets for Zeb and myself, and two others if someone else wants to go.

Beach Blanket Jingo

The Cigar Guys, our resident sore winners on the patio, have a new bête noire: Senator Barbara Boxer. Because of her token opposition to the vote, she has DISSSGRAAAAAACED THE STATE OF CAAAAALIFORNIA and must of course be deposed. Ideally there would be a recall election, but I think they would accept an auto-da-fé. They were spurting out flaccid zingers like “Boxer, someone should box her! In a boxing ring!” etc. and laughing at their own jokes the other day. At least Tom knows not to talk about “journalistic integrity” within earshot of me since my spittake the last time he said the phrase. He’s their ringleader and is fairly smart but when he talks politics his eyes turn into spirals and he levitates and weird things happen to his hair. He’ll make sense about the weather or cars or something for 30 seconds and then he starts a sentence with “IF THOSE PEOPLE IN EYE-RACK WOULD STOP, JUST FOR A MOMENT, JUST FOR A SECOND, TO CONSIDER…” and it’s all over. These guys actually bray; it’s not a metaphor. Harrumph harrumph harrumph! I didn’t hear a harrumph out of that guy!

They all need a year doing shitty temp work and living on Costco ramen in an unairconditioned apartment in Van Nuys. The joke goes that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is a police report; point taken. The difference between a conservative and a liberal might well be a year without medical insurance, working in a call center with your bathroom breaks on a timer, and riding the Los Angeles public transit system.

Speaking of which, here’s a new hybrid author idea: Ayn Rice. Discuss.

I’m staving off melancholia, anxiety, and self-hatred with solitaire this week. Score’s tied.