Good, Long and Snotty
Jun. 9th, 2003 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseNo, not a law firm but a description of my four-day weekend. (long post)
My job has, thank all gods in heaven and earth, returned to three days a week and today's my first day back in the office since last Wednesday. Thursday evening was spectacular. The Radiohead concert, live from NYC, was so intense and fun and right-on musically that I'm desperately hoping they'll release it as a commercial video. Frankly, that must be their intent; why else shoot it with multi-cameras? Just for the cross-Canada broadcast? Interestingly enough, it was the experimental material from Kid A and Amnesiac that rocked the hardest. The main set ended with "Everything in its Right Place," a song where no one played guitar. The song ended with the two guitarists on their knees, playing weird sound effects through their pedals, liked two intense worm-pickers.
On Friday, my cold began with a sore throat. Extra vitamin C did not help.
I got a lot of work done on my brother-in-law's website and discovered, with great glee, the "a:hover" function in CSS. Even though it's not well-implemented in IE5 Mac, it's a great and simple thing. I continued to work over the course of the weekend on the complexities of this essentially simple site. I'm very pleased with my design, both graphically and in terms of ease of use.
I have yet to nail some of the javascripting I need to do. My head just doesn't seem to be able to grasp the basic concept behind the code. This is a frustrating experience for me. In almost everything I do in life, I try to understand the underlying structure, whether it's computer-based production, home repair, politics or relationships. I'm not used to staring blankly. Slowly, it's starting to make sense, but I wish someone could understand what I'm not seeing and explain the code, saying: "This points to that and then refers back to this before making a choice at this juncture and moving on to the output."
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elatedpawn and redrunner were in town apartment hunting, a demeaning and depressing passtime. We had fun dressing Pawn up in a more conservative outfit. Luckily, I had a subdued paisley golf shirt that my mother had bought me a few years ago ("It was on sale. Isn't it nice?") and it did the trick. He looked like a 12 year old Mormon. There was also a discussion about whether it was better strategically for them to present themselves as a couple or "just good friends". A couple, you see, can break up and want out of their lease. Ironically, this same debate frames much of their personal interaction. Along with Snake and B'rer Rabbit we hit the streets, heading off to look at some local rental listings.
Now, I should backtrack and say that the most beautiful house on our street has suddenly gone on the market. The house belonged to an artist and his wife. The artist died about three years ago and, within the same year, one of their sons who sufferred from depression, moved back in with her and then committed suicide while she was out at the grocery store. We see her regularly walking her small poodle and have a "Good morning, how are you" relationshiop.
Snake, who lusts after this house, had phoned me up last week at work with instructions to phone the agent and get the price (I do all phone calling in the household, especially potentially embarrassing phone calling -- Snake's excuse is that he grew up without a telephone). I had to break his heart by telling him that selling our house and buying that one would result in an additional montly cost of $2300. Oops.
But, on Saturday, as the five of us headed out, we saw that there was an open house for the property! Never ones to pass up an opportunity to spy on a neighbour's house, we went in, leaving Pawn and Redrunner on the sidewalk. I mainly used the tour to gather ideas for our own renovations, especially of the backyard. But it wasn't an ordinary open house -- the widow who lives there must have had spare copies of the catalogue from her husband's final exhibition because, along with the sheet of house specs, we got the catalogue and page of information about him.
The combination open house and art tour was odd and a little creepy. Suddenly, we were made aware of the art on the wall and I found myself in two distincitly different headspaces: losing myself in musings about colour relationships and trying to figure out if the air conditioning system was adequate to cool the attic bedroom. In the bedroom, under the photograph of a handsome, smiling 30 year old was a small, neatly typed square of paper with his birth and death dates.
The widow wasn't there (owners usually aren't at open houses), but she had clearly chosen to make the invasive process of an open house into a personal expression. If the vultures were going to descend, she would damned well assert her agenda.
We came outside to find Redrunner and Pawn in conversation with a passerby who had mistaken them for a young professional couple buying their first home. The disguise was working!
On Sunday, as my cold moved from my throat to my nose, a woman phoned up asking for my opinions of Pawn as a prospective tenant. I gave him a rave, adding that the number one passion of his life was respecting other people's property. I lied that I had met him when he had done freelance web consulting for our company. Name-dropping the company name seemed to impress her. It was easier than saying that I knew him from loosely-defined retreat weekends where people are often naked and crying.
When I told him about the phonecall, Pawn seemed to think it ethically odd that my first reaction to a reference call would be to lie. This makes no sense to me; it's all like Snake's job applications -- pointless hoops that must be jumped in a given order. Lie, truth, whatever sounds best. Besides, Mr. Mormon, you're already wearing my mom's Sears sale shirt; how much less real can you get?
Finally, two amazing movies on DVD: The Pianist and Talk to Her. The Pianist was an elegant lesson in understatement and clarity. Harrowing, magnificent. Talk to Her is, I think, a bit of a freak show disguised as an art movie. Camp in philosopher's drag and I loved it.
My job has, thank all gods in heaven and earth, returned to three days a week and today's my first day back in the office since last Wednesday. Thursday evening was spectacular. The Radiohead concert, live from NYC, was so intense and fun and right-on musically that I'm desperately hoping they'll release it as a commercial video. Frankly, that must be their intent; why else shoot it with multi-cameras? Just for the cross-Canada broadcast? Interestingly enough, it was the experimental material from Kid A and Amnesiac that rocked the hardest. The main set ended with "Everything in its Right Place," a song where no one played guitar. The song ended with the two guitarists on their knees, playing weird sound effects through their pedals, liked two intense worm-pickers.
On Friday, my cold began with a sore throat. Extra vitamin C did not help.
I got a lot of work done on my brother-in-law's website and discovered, with great glee, the "a:hover" function in CSS. Even though it's not well-implemented in IE5 Mac, it's a great and simple thing. I continued to work over the course of the weekend on the complexities of this essentially simple site. I'm very pleased with my design, both graphically and in terms of ease of use.
I have yet to nail some of the javascripting I need to do. My head just doesn't seem to be able to grasp the basic concept behind the code. This is a frustrating experience for me. In almost everything I do in life, I try to understand the underlying structure, whether it's computer-based production, home repair, politics or relationships. I'm not used to staring blankly. Slowly, it's starting to make sense, but I wish someone could understand what I'm not seeing and explain the code, saying: "This points to that and then refers back to this before making a choice at this juncture and moving on to the output."
elatedpawn and redrunner were in town apartment hunting, a demeaning and depressing passtime. We had fun dressing Pawn up in a more conservative outfit. Luckily, I had a subdued paisley golf shirt that my mother had bought me a few years ago ("It was on sale. Isn't it nice?") and it did the trick. He looked like a 12 year old Mormon. There was also a discussion about whether it was better strategically for them to present themselves as a couple or "just good friends". A couple, you see, can break up and want out of their lease. Ironically, this same debate frames much of their personal interaction. Along with Snake and B'rer Rabbit we hit the streets, heading off to look at some local rental listings.Now, I should backtrack and say that the most beautiful house on our street has suddenly gone on the market. The house belonged to an artist and his wife. The artist died about three years ago and, within the same year, one of their sons who sufferred from depression, moved back in with her and then committed suicide while she was out at the grocery store. We see her regularly walking her small poodle and have a "Good morning, how are you" relationshiop.
Snake, who lusts after this house, had phoned me up last week at work with instructions to phone the agent and get the price (I do all phone calling in the household, especially potentially embarrassing phone calling -- Snake's excuse is that he grew up without a telephone). I had to break his heart by telling him that selling our house and buying that one would result in an additional montly cost of $2300. Oops.
But, on Saturday, as the five of us headed out, we saw that there was an open house for the property! Never ones to pass up an opportunity to spy on a neighbour's house, we went in, leaving Pawn and Redrunner on the sidewalk. I mainly used the tour to gather ideas for our own renovations, especially of the backyard. But it wasn't an ordinary open house -- the widow who lives there must have had spare copies of the catalogue from her husband's final exhibition because, along with the sheet of house specs, we got the catalogue and page of information about him.
The combination open house and art tour was odd and a little creepy. Suddenly, we were made aware of the art on the wall and I found myself in two distincitly different headspaces: losing myself in musings about colour relationships and trying to figure out if the air conditioning system was adequate to cool the attic bedroom. In the bedroom, under the photograph of a handsome, smiling 30 year old was a small, neatly typed square of paper with his birth and death dates.
The widow wasn't there (owners usually aren't at open houses), but she had clearly chosen to make the invasive process of an open house into a personal expression. If the vultures were going to descend, she would damned well assert her agenda.
We came outside to find Redrunner and Pawn in conversation with a passerby who had mistaken them for a young professional couple buying their first home. The disguise was working!
On Sunday, as my cold moved from my throat to my nose, a woman phoned up asking for my opinions of Pawn as a prospective tenant. I gave him a rave, adding that the number one passion of his life was respecting other people's property. I lied that I had met him when he had done freelance web consulting for our company. Name-dropping the company name seemed to impress her. It was easier than saying that I knew him from loosely-defined retreat weekends where people are often naked and crying.
When I told him about the phonecall, Pawn seemed to think it ethically odd that my first reaction to a reference call would be to lie. This makes no sense to me; it's all like Snake's job applications -- pointless hoops that must be jumped in a given order. Lie, truth, whatever sounds best. Besides, Mr. Mormon, you're already wearing my mom's Sears sale shirt; how much less real can you get?
Finally, two amazing movies on DVD: The Pianist and Talk to Her. The Pianist was an elegant lesson in understatement and clarity. Harrowing, magnificent. Talk to Her is, I think, a bit of a freak show disguised as an art movie. Camp in philosopher's drag and I loved it.
