Zero-Point Nattering 11 August 1998

At last, scientists see personality in a mollusk.

Even less than usual to talk about today. I decided to take the day off, mostly because just as I started to think about it yesterday, two people came up with Gosh-Hi-ASAP projects. Tipping point.

Finally finished Rainbow Six last night. Oy. But then I read Washington's Dirigible by John Barnes, and Oh happy day. I can't describe how wonderful it was to go from this:

"Hey, you can even tell when they get killed," Noonan said. When the
hearts stopped, so did the signals the DKL gadget tracked. Cool,
Timothy thought.

to this:

Finally we came gliding in like immense owls about twenty feet over a
wide, flat field of snow. That is, if you can imagine a gorgeous
Arabo-Polynesian owl gliding in gracefully going "Whooooo!" and a
square-built muscular owl flailing around, swinging from side to side,
going "Ooops, oops, oops," under his breath, just before doing a
face-plant into a snowdrift.

I think that's my spirit name from now on: Owl-That-Goes-Ooops.

Shortly after the mating ritual, the male rapidly declines. He loses the sharpness of his camouflage. His eyes cloud over, he stops eating, and he dies of starvation.

Another sign that I probably need some time off, a trip overseas, a lobotomy, or something, is that I'm acting like a snippy asshole way too often. It's particularly easy to do with email, for the obvious reasons. Lately, all it takes is for there to be some kind of small irritant in my environment - an air-conditioned draft down my neck, a scratchy bit on the inseam of my jeans, this god-damned SHIFT key! - er, well, you see what I mean - and then LandLord help the next person who sends me an innocent but slightly misinformed request. "Well, if you would just *read* what I said the *last* time you asked me this, it would be *obvious* that nyaah nyaah nyaah," etc.

When I was a kid, I used to do that kind of thing. Mouth off to my brother, zing him about some dumb misstatement he'd just made. He would express his low comfort level with our communication by beating the crap out of me. Fortunately, I'm not related to anyone at work.

It's really not a smart thing to do. Even though I can apologize after the fact, and most people are very nice about accepting, nothing ever removes the tinge behavior like that leaves on their impression of you. And it's the kind of reputation that spreads quickly, too. That's something I wonder about a lot, reputation. To me, it's as much of who you are as any ideas you might have inside your own head; but unlike those ideas, you almost never really know much about it. Well, I don't, anyway.

Without safeguards, for example, the enhancement of our brains could easily destroy our minds, leaving us unable to distinguish reality from virtual reality - maybe even self from non-self.

Here's how hermetic my world is: I'm drawing life lessons from FreeCell. I was noticing during last night's 4th or 5th zombie-zone game, that although you can get very caught up in trying to line up all the cards in nice neat ordered little stacks, it's really not important. All that matters is clearing away the confusion and disorder. Once you do that, things sort themselves out pretty quickly. Isn't that special?

Sigh.

All quotes taken from the 11 August 1998 national edition of The New York Times.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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