(no subject)

I suppose it's been a week or two of trite revelations.

( Like these four... )

And this is unrelated to those, but my coworkers are of an entirely different culture than I am. I was reminded of this, and learned more of its extent, today at lunch.

( It surprised me... )

(no subject)

Jay McInerny wrote a book called "Bright Lights, Big City". It's about NYC and the decadent, nihilistic culture of night-clubbing youth in the 80's. It's written in the second person, and is a sort of pseudobiography. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.

What I like about it most is the trick of using the second person, but very specifically and very obviously referring to somebody who is unlikely to be much like the reader. It's a way of making observations about human nature generally and letting them strike home by aiming them at the character. Good trick. Really it's a trick of pseudobiography generally. I'm not nearly as big on The Catcher in the Rye as most people are but it does something akin to the same trick and does it tolerably.

I've been thinking a bit about that just lately, and about the phrase ( do what only you can do. )

* A quick web search suggests that the quote (by Sir John Harvey Jones) is "Only do what only you can do." It's slightly cleverer that way, but I don't like it quite so much.

(no subject)

Sometimes I have real off-days. My balance has been off today, as it was from the previous two boat trips. More so than those, though. I've just generally been kinda clumsy, possibly for that reason.

I went to a gathering of folks I quite like and put my foot in my mouth, if not particularly badly, a couple of times, and made a couple of significant faux pax (sp?) by not thinking. The clumsiness didn't help, overall. But I'm feeling like I've managed to go to a much firmer outsider status than I'd previously had there. I've been trying to put more energy there, but it's not really enough and I have gaps where I don't see them for weeks or (more rarely) months.

Just to make sure I understood where things stood, the light bulb burned out when I got home and hit the switch on the way in. I've also got some kind of funky odor hanging around my apartment, just a whiff now and again in a couple of places. I'm hoping it's the remains of the garbage I just threw out.

It's been that kind of day. Had I had a different weekend I might be somewhat depressed or quite peeved right now.

But I know that my luck tends to run in cycles. I sent some important email today (not related to my romantic life, I'm happy to say) so maybe I've doomed that. But if I can avoid anything else major happening today, maybe tomorrow will be better. There are a couple of things sitting delicately in my life right now and I really don't want to upset them. They're the good ones.