Kitty Litter
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Leaving Well Enough Alone
(Or, The Trouble With Brain Farts)
I got a Pocket PC just two weeks ago, and enjoyed every minute of the 72 hours I had it. Past tense.
It was supposed to be the reward I gave myself for working hard on lesson plans and editing lousy articles for six weeks straight. Now, I am not normally an OC person, but when I noticed a small blemish on the screen, out came my trusty Buddy Computer cleaner, and I spritzed the blemish until it came out with hard rubbing. I only noticed later that I’d soaked the screen completely, and that the liquid had seeped into the LCD.
Allow me to say that I am not normally this boneheaded (although that’s debatable), but it does prove my friend Michael’s theory: sometimes even smart people have to let out brain farts to maintain sanity. In my case I just wish my brain hadn’t done a gigantic fart that cost me such a large amount; in this case, it was my first paycheck as the assistant editor of a tony new bridal magazine.
“Argh,” my favorite expression, doesn’t even begin to cover it. For the sake of a small, rather negligible blemish, I lost a huge investment that I’d been looking forward to for months. That amount could’ve been spent on other, better things, or saved up for something else. The road to hell, good intentions: see the connection now, Charlie? Ah, yes, I’ve seen it before. I just forgot all about it.
Worse, all I get is sympathy. The last time I did something this stupid, people laughed at me, or downright rubbed my incompetent snout in what I’d done. Just as I deserved.
But my techie friend Marty moaned and sighed. He gave me a withering look…once. Then he left me alone. My boyfriend is even worse. When I told him what happened, he did what he does best: listened to me, sighed, then told me I was old enough to know the consequences. And damn it, did I ever.
But there are times when I know I need a major dressing down, and this was one of them. My boyfriend is intolerant of incompetence that hurts other people, but when I've bogged myself down in the process, he tends to just tell me off--once--and, having said his piece, keep any further thoughts to himself. Just once I wish he could break his rule and tell me off so that I can, well, get over it.
I am the talkative type; God knows I sometimes suspect I took on a teaching job to get an outlet for the never-ending “stream of fecal matter emanating from the nether regions of a male bovine quadruped,” to borrow a line from Buddy Tomas, author of Wala Lang. Strangely enough, though, I find myself completely silent when I’m alone. (But again, that's another story) And when that happens, there's no one else to blame, because the victim and the perpetrator of stupidity is one person. Me. Having someone else tell you off takes some of the guilt away.
Does this sound like I want a lecture? Probably. I want someone to tell me I was stupid. Amend that: I want someone I’m close to, whose opinion I trust, to tell me that I was a downright idiot. I know it. Perversely, though, I think it’ll sink in better when someone tells me about it.
I guess this is a mental fart brought on by overwork, and my current obsession with making our domicile something neater than a hamster nest. I wanted the PPC clean because I was going into the lair of the yuppie, Makati. I didn’t want to look like some Slobula tinkering with technology beyond my comprehension.
Was that desire worth five figures? Perhaps. But all I’ve really done is pay to prove to myself that I am, in fact, a Slobula dealing with complex technology beyond my comprehension.
So much for living and learning. (Cliché alert!) When will I ever learn to leave well enough alone?
I got a Pocket PC just two weeks ago, and enjoyed every minute of the 72 hours I had it. Past tense.
It was supposed to be the reward I gave myself for working hard on lesson plans and editing lousy articles for six weeks straight. Now, I am not normally an OC person, but when I noticed a small blemish on the screen, out came my trusty Buddy Computer cleaner, and I spritzed the blemish until it came out with hard rubbing. I only noticed later that I’d soaked the screen completely, and that the liquid had seeped into the LCD.
Allow me to say that I am not normally this boneheaded (although that’s debatable), but it does prove my friend Michael’s theory: sometimes even smart people have to let out brain farts to maintain sanity. In my case I just wish my brain hadn’t done a gigantic fart that cost me such a large amount; in this case, it was my first paycheck as the assistant editor of a tony new bridal magazine.
“Argh,” my favorite expression, doesn’t even begin to cover it. For the sake of a small, rather negligible blemish, I lost a huge investment that I’d been looking forward to for months. That amount could’ve been spent on other, better things, or saved up for something else. The road to hell, good intentions: see the connection now, Charlie? Ah, yes, I’ve seen it before. I just forgot all about it.
Worse, all I get is sympathy. The last time I did something this stupid, people laughed at me, or downright rubbed my incompetent snout in what I’d done. Just as I deserved.
But my techie friend Marty moaned and sighed. He gave me a withering look…once. Then he left me alone. My boyfriend is even worse. When I told him what happened, he did what he does best: listened to me, sighed, then told me I was old enough to know the consequences. And damn it, did I ever.
But there are times when I know I need a major dressing down, and this was one of them. My boyfriend is intolerant of incompetence that hurts other people, but when I've bogged myself down in the process, he tends to just tell me off--once--and, having said his piece, keep any further thoughts to himself. Just once I wish he could break his rule and tell me off so that I can, well, get over it.
I am the talkative type; God knows I sometimes suspect I took on a teaching job to get an outlet for the never-ending “stream of fecal matter emanating from the nether regions of a male bovine quadruped,” to borrow a line from Buddy Tomas, author of Wala Lang. Strangely enough, though, I find myself completely silent when I’m alone. (But again, that's another story) And when that happens, there's no one else to blame, because the victim and the perpetrator of stupidity is one person. Me. Having someone else tell you off takes some of the guilt away.
Does this sound like I want a lecture? Probably. I want someone to tell me I was stupid. Amend that: I want someone I’m close to, whose opinion I trust, to tell me that I was a downright idiot. I know it. Perversely, though, I think it’ll sink in better when someone tells me about it.
I guess this is a mental fart brought on by overwork, and my current obsession with making our domicile something neater than a hamster nest. I wanted the PPC clean because I was going into the lair of the yuppie, Makati. I didn’t want to look like some Slobula tinkering with technology beyond my comprehension.
Was that desire worth five figures? Perhaps. But all I’ve really done is pay to prove to myself that I am, in fact, a Slobula dealing with complex technology beyond my comprehension.
So much for living and learning. (Cliché alert!) When will I ever learn to leave well enough alone?
Labels: funny observations, technology
Definitions
This comes from "A very 'special' dictionary by lily22 on memegen.com (can't get it to display properly here, argh)
Look up: matabangpusa
Definition: To laugh nervously, even when one doesn't get the joke, thus providing immense amusement to those who actually get it.
Humor is a big thing with me--I did my master's thesis on it, after all--and I was delighted to get this response on the definition generator.
I think my loud, booming laughter intimidates people, so they laugh nervously when I do. Why are we afraid to not get jokes anyway?
But laughter can be intimate and personal. I'm sure that if I write "I'm in like Danz da Leche Flin," no one's gonna get it but my friends.
Must remember to write about that sometime.
Labels: katuwaan
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
University Daze: School Snippets 1
University Daze (after James Thurber)
Some clever student today should do an update, substituting the computer for the microscope, and a female athlete for Bolenciecwcz.- Writing Creative Nonfiction: The Literature of Reality (Gay Talese and Barbara Lounsberry)
Now that’s a tough challenge. Pulling a complete blank while facing a computer is pretty easy, and I do it quite often, especially when the blasted thing tells me that I’ve committed Error Number 1.%427^0qs$ and it’s about to crash. At best, computers and I are wary allies in the battle against Diablo; at worst, we are Iran and Iraq linked by keyboard, mouse, and screen.
It’s been a decade since the University decided it had had enough of me and threw me out; of course the correct term is “graduating,” but in the grind of the machinery we call “school,” March at the end of four or five years (and in the case of many UP grads, six, seven, eight, nine and ten, with the record going to a guy I knew who spent fourteen years as an undergrad) is like the dinging of the bell after you’ve finished microwaving your meal. It’s done when they say you’re done, and to hell with considerations of palatability and taste. Same with the average UP student, prestige and “Iskolar ng Bayan” aside, we’re a motley lot, usually only slightly better (or worse, depending on your sympathies) than the average school’s graduating batch.
I’m going to graduate again, this time, with a master’s degree. Do I feel like a master of creative writing then? Does this degree give me the right to pull a Simon Cowell on the unworthy in my writing classes? Lord knows I wish it did.
The new General Education program has me lusting after it; if I could, I’d take college all over again. No more PREREQUISITES! Pick the subjects you want!
Of course, with the quality of kids coming in today, here’s a series of updates to the “School Snafus” essay in my book, “Misadventures of a Disorganized Young Woman” (now that wasn’t shameless plugging now, was it?) I call them “School Snippets,” and here’s the first of what I hope will be a series. Enjoy.
School Snippet No. 1
I asked my intro to creative writing students to build blogs for fun. When submission time came, I asked them to submit the URLs on a small sheet of paper.
One paper came back with this: “My URL is changedtoprotecttheignorant@hotmail.com and the password is alsochangedforobviousreasons.”
I sent a text message to the girl explaining that what she had sent to me was her email address, and that the password should have been confidential. I also suggested that she use Blogspot, Livejournal, or other popular sites for blogs. As a precaution, I added that she should text me the words in the address bar of her browser. “That’s on top of the page,” I said.
She thanked me and sent me a message a week later with her new URL: WELCOME TO HOTMAIL
Labels: "joys" of teaching, funny stories
Monday, September 27, 2004
Flattery is where you find it. Or so I think. Make what you will of this one.
Went to a school in Makati for a poetry reading (and that’s another story in itself.) Waited from 7:30 to 10(!) for an event scheduled to start “promptly at 8” to begin.
Got tired of waiting amid all the “I-love-my-school-and-I’m-so-proud” juveniles, and crossed back to Rockwell for ice cream. Ahead of us was a student of that school. Noticed two shit-ugly guys in a green Civic with the plates “CHAIRMAN”—is that stolen or what? They hailed the girl, who foolishly went over to them. After hearing what they had to say, she shook her head and left hurriedly.
Seems they wanted to solicit some fun of the naked variety. Given how closely they resembled apes (and I insult apes everywhere, both of the human and simian kind when I say that), I understood why they needed to pay for what is normally good, clean fun. Must’ve been their first time, as they tried to hail every girl in sight.
Including me.
They really do give licenses to the blind nowadays, don’t they? Last I checked, people could see me coming from a distance. And there’s no mistaking me for anyone else; my bulk is distinctive.
My boyfriend, drama queen that he is, wanted to go over and give them the once-over. I stopped him. “Don’t give them attention. That’s what they want,” was what I said.
But I can’t stop thinking about it. My intellectual side is screaming at me to drop the issue; I was “objectified,” after all. It’s also telling me that they were likely to have been simply desperate, and were ready to settle for anyone. Or they came there for the express purpose of annoying the ILMSAISP* (see above) crowd.
I’m reminded of Barbara Gonzalez’s essay on a bunch of construction workers ogling her fiftysomething body. She chose to find the experience empowering; after all, she wasn’t the one lecherously eyeing someone old enough to be her mother.
Hmm.
At least I’m not turned on by some portly woman making her way across the street. (I wonder what my boyfriend would think of that? Then again he always argues that it’s my mind that turns him on. I choose to see that as a compliment.)
Later my best friend Goldie Golds texted me the URLs of bunch of sites devoted to fat Filipinas. Whoa.
Second job, here I come. I’ve even picked out a screen name for myself, something “exotic” enough to appeal to the hairy Caucasians who frequent the site. “Misticatabana Malandipa.”
Imagine that. A pay-per-view site called http://www.misticatabana-malandipa.com
As Lisa Simpson once said, “We live in a disturbing world.”
Labels: first post, weirdos on the road
