Silliest Job Ever (Strictly NC-17 Today)

The "autocorrect" feature on Microsoft Word corrects "dickweed" to "duckweed." I don't even know what duckweed is. "Dickweed," on the other hand, is my very favorite swear word.

Now, why I was typing "dickweed" at 8 o' clock on a Saturday morning is another story.

But it got me thinking about this email program I used to use, Eudora. Eudora has a "mood minder" that alerts one to racy content.

For incoming mail, it assigns little chile pepper icons to messages with bad words. Any email from my friend, Jeff, always had at least three chile peppers by it.

For outgoing messages, it gives you a cutesy pop-up saying something like: "This email could get your keyboard washed with soap--are you sure you want to send it?" Then it would show you the offending words, with a little squiggly green underline.

I never really thought much about it until one day when I got this nannyish message for an email I'd written to a colleague about the catering for a colloquium lunch. I couldn't imagine that I had let a "fuck" slip into a discussion about whether or not we should serve chicken sandwiches. I had not, in fact. This was the offending passage:

Should we order pots of coffee again? Their coffee is never that great--maybe we should just get hot water and teabag it.

"Teabag" was underlined. I laughed until I ruptured something. Eudora, you dirty dirty girl.

I started testing old Eudora, to see what she recognized.

Muff diver..............underlined.
Rimjob.....................underlined.
Pole smoker............not underlined.
Carpet muncher.....underlined.
Dirty Sanchez.........not underlined.

You get the point. After I stopped laughing and finally remembered that I'm not actually twelve years old (despite all evidence to the contrary), I started thinking about the programmer who works for Eudora, whose job it is to teach her that "teabag" as a verb is naughty.

This person, FOR A LIVING,* types things like "boobies" into a computer program.

THAT is the silliest job ever.

*Unlike me, who types things like "boobies" into the computer for fun. MUCH more dignified.

"Work" From Home Day!!!

Actually, it's been "work" from home week, with much the same result. Very little work and a lot of dicking around.

Now, often when I work from home, I actually DO work. Without the quotation marks. But some days I am just a useless burden on the earth.

Like today. Or much of this week.

It all seems tediously familar. I've read a lot of blogs. Got caught up on off-season trades (the Mariners picked up Jose Vidro). Went for a jog. Cleaned the house. Dug up some bulbs (we're having a late start to winter). Watched an episode of "The Rockford Files." Jim Rockford is just so cool. Made some soup. Potato leek. Wrote some bullshit post in which I tried to extrapolate some political truth from my lousy memory. Pffft.

None of which is work. Or even close.

I told myself before each of these activities: "Well, after this I will get down to work" or "Finishing this will help me focus on work."

Lies. All lies.

I did answer a couple of "can you tell me when the final is?" emails. And then put my email on autoreply: "Feemus is away from the office. Whatever it is, look on the fucking syllabus. And have a happy fucking New Year."

So now I am really going to get to work. Right after I put plastic up on the windows. That will help me focus...

Reading for Plot

In the beginning of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, Philip Marlowe flirts with a receptionist:

She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.

She's a nothing character, a no one, she's gone in half a page never to return. But that's all I remember from the book. I couldn't even say for sure that there was a lady in a lake, if the title didn't remind me.

In this snippet, we see the whole novel en abyme: a universe that means you no particular harm, but that will harm you nonetheless.

At least I think that's what's going on. I can't remember anything else about the novel.

I have a terrible memory for plot. I can be in the middle of reading a novel and not remember what's happening. I generally have a sense that there's some guy or some lady and they're doing stuff. Or not.

This is not to say that I don't read for plot. I do--it just doesn't do me any good.

What I remember from novels are moments. Sometimes, like with the Chandler, they are moments that seem emblematic of what's going on in the book. From Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, I remember the chess set that Lord Peter gives to Harriet Vane. The chess set seems a metaphor for their courtship--calculating, bloodless. But Harriet accepts the gift, falls in love with it. And when an intruder breaks the pieces, we sense that we are now in the realm of the irrevocable. There's no going back. And sure enough, by the end of the book, Harriet finally agrees to marry Lord Peter, and their relationship finally moves beyond the cautious strategizing of a chess game.

But as far as what the mystery in Gaudy Night is? I have no idea.

Sometimes, however, what I remember doesn't have anything much to do with the novel as a whole. For example, all I ever remember about Jude the Obscure is that he sent off for books on Latin and was crushed to discover that there wasn't a secret code to deciphering the texts, and that learning another language was hard work for which there is no shortcut. I didn't even remember the big traumatic moment until I was discussing with a friend yesterday (the realization that I couldn't remember the most memorable part of the novel is what prompted this post).

There are in our existence, Wordsworth reminds us somewhat pompously, spots of time that with distinct pre-eminence retain a rennovating virtue. Our understanding of the past gets organized around these moments--they become the template by which we (re)construct the narrative of our history.

What we remember is important, but it's also important to remember that it's not the whole story. An historical imagination demands that we force ourselves to remember not just Jude Frawley's Latin textbooks, but that other thing that happened [I don't want to spoil the book for anyone]. It also demands that we figure out just how Marlowe chatting up the office girl fits in with everything else that happens.

We're not very good at this as a nation. Better, perhaps, than I am with novels, but still not very good. Look how easy it was to convince people that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were connected. People remembered the Gulf War and 9/11 and constructed a narrative around these two things.

Just not, you know, the right narrative.

If we only remember a few salient moments, we run the risk of letting our history get scripted for us. And we can see where that leads.

I am thinking now of all that's being written about Gerald Ford. From the right, he's being praised for his calm leadership and decency. From the left, he's being vilified as the man who took office without being elected and who pardoned the criminal who put him there. Neither of these is an accurate portrait.

He was a man who stepped into an impossible situation and handled it badly, but not as badly as most people would have done. I think that the real lesson from the Ford presidency is that years of ideologically motivated miltarism and government corruption (sound familiar?) can't be solved by even a decent guy. Vietnam and Watergate couldn't be undone in half a term--and certainly not by a man who was beholden to his predecessors.

I think there's a lesson in the Ford administration that we'll want to remember a couple of years from now.

Historical understanding involves more than just organizing a narrative out of what we happen to remember or what happens to suit us. Shame on everyone for falsifying the past to make a point--the stakes are a lot greater than what I happen to remember about old Jude.

Sweet Fancy Moses

As I've likely mentioned at some point on This Old Blog, I am a little obsessive/compulsive. There are certain patterns that I find comforting, but as OCDers go, I am not terribly ritualistic. Mostly I just have to check things (precisely 17 times, or there will be a nuclear war) a lot. And I worry about germs. I worry that I will catch something. Or that I will get someone else sick.

I get very stressed out at parties if I have to shake hands too much. Alcohol helps. Topically or internally.

I won't use a handtowel, because I'm convinced that they're crawling with airborne bathroom germs from the toilet flushing and with germs from people who didn't wash their hands well enough and then wiped the rest of their germs on the towel where they multiply in the moist bathroomy terrycloth.

When the subway is crowded, I panic a little because of think that all the oxygen is getting used up and that the "air" is just carbon dioxide and microbes.

I have to wash everything I buy before I use it to get off the "factory chemicals." I know that this is stupid (my sister likes to point out that I don't know shit about either chemicals or factories), but, well, you know.

All in all, it's manageable. I do miss the bus pretty often, because I have to go home and check something, but I get by ok.

There's medication for it, but I worry about medication. Medicine is a little like germs, crawling through your bloodstream and doing god knows what.

But here's the reason I am posting: someone just told me about a new behaviorist "therapy" that culminates in....TOUCHING A TOILET.

Now this is not just revolting, it taps into what every crazy person believes deep down: that they're not really crazy and that a "cure" will just leave them vulnerable to bad bad things. This is like curing a claustrophobe by burying him alive.

If being "cured" means touching toilets, I'll stay sick.

Seriously--I'm right about this, right? You don't have to have OCD to think that touching a toilet is a bad bad idea. Right?

Sanskrit for Dummies, and Other Tales from the Bargain Shelf

I went book shopping yesterday. Which was not really a good idea--I am up to my eyeballs in work and down to the sofa cushions for finances.

But the heart wants what it wants. And my heart wanted to avoid work and buy books. My heart is also a sucker for a bargain, and I knew that the local academic bookstore was having a sale.

This bookstore carries mostly books from university presses, but many/most of them are for a general audience so there's a lot to choose from for good non-fiction. But on the bargain shelf? Not so much.

Here were some of my finds:

Bumblebee Economics

A commodities market with just pollen and honey would certainly simplify matters.

What Are Freedoms For?

I'm pretty sure that having some egghead tell you what to do with your freedoms profoundly misses the point.

Why Do Men BBQ?

I'm pretty sure that having to have some egghead explain it to you profoundly misses the point.

In the Fascist Bathroom

Where the spycams don't just record, they issue instructions?

[actually, I looked inside this one and it looked pretty cool--I almost bought it. It's about the postpunk era and devotes much time to the very best band in the world, The Mekons. Still, it's a funny title.]

Pictures at an Execution

Surprised this one didn't sell out for the holidays...

Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making

Only three?

Making Babies

I flipped this one open, hoping for a how-to, only to discover the much less sexy subtitle: "The Science of Pregnancy." Sigh.

Then my greedy little bookbuying eyes saw a collection of Loeb's; those editions of Greek and Latin texts with hilariously bad facing-page translations. I remember once memorizing almost a whole volume of LoebHorace in order to pass an exam I hadn't studied for. The professor wrote "Loebism" in the margin about 30 times. I guess I wasn't the first person to try that trick...

But they're useful volumes, so I took a gander at what made it to the bargain shelf:

Pliny's Natural History, Books XX-XXIII

Well, if you haven't read I-IXX, what's the point, right? You don't want to start in the middle. Not with natural history.

Flavius Josephus's The Jewish War

Surprisingly, obscure historiography wasn't a big seller this season. Go figure.

Aristotle's The Generation of Animals

I'll wait for the movie.

Betrayal

I was watching a little television last night and a Nyquil ad came on. Or maybe it was Tylenol. I can't remember.

What I do remember is that Lili Taylor did the voice over. Lili Taylor, object of a nearly 20 year crush, was hawking overpriced cold medicine. Lili Taylor, whom my wife refers to as "your little girlfriend," (as in, "oh, I know why you want to see Household Saints--your little girlfriend is in it." Lili Taylor had a television series briefly a few years ago that almost busted up my marriage. I tried pretending to be jealous of Oliver Platt, just so things would be equal, but it didn't work. Has anyone ever really been jealous of Oliver Platt?) is a corporate shill.

The voice that launched a thousand fantasies tried to get me to buy expensive and foul-tasting and likely immuno-suppressing syrup the only redeeming feature of which is that it comes in a new unnatural color.

Sigh.

I will likely recover (catching a rerun of the X-Files episode that she's on should do the trick), but why must my fantasy women betray me? Why?

Lili, I forgave you for dating that Broderick guy. But Nyquil ads?

So this is a plea to my remaining celebrity crushes (I'm talking to you Chrissie): YOU ARE ON NOTICE. Don't do anything stupid.

At least not until I recover from this.

Confidential to Emmylou: I understand why you changed the words to the Neil Young song. I am over it. Let's just put it all behind us, ok?

p.s. I know my thing against cold medicine is weird. I can't help it. It's unappealing and overpriced and I am convinced that has deleterious effects on one's health.