Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson:

Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

(The next several paragraphs add a lot of important context.)

Didn't mean to have nothing but automatically-posted QotD entries in my journal for a week -- sorry about that. First there was the ( sixteen hour delay in getting home from the mountains. )

Then there was my just being Pretty Darned Tired when I got home, not just from the long (and enjoyable despite getting rained on All Weekend Long) weekend, but also from the heat that arrived in Baltimore this week. After that, I've been running around trying to accomplish overdue stuff on my to-do list (I finally got my tent over to my mother's house yesterday to dry it, since I'd had to fold it up wet -- there's not enough room in my own back yard to set it up). And all of a sudden it's Friday again. ##blink## Wow, where'd the week go? Not sure how much I'll be posting for a bit -- I'm doing stuff in small doses then retreating to the one almost cool room in the house to rest. And I've actually got a work assignment to be behind on as well as all the other stuff.

Some weeks are like that, y'know? I just try not to have too many of 'em in a row. Looking forward to the cool front that's supposed to get this far East later today. The house will still be too hot, but maybe it'll be a bit more bearable. I think the heat's affecting the cat, too. I've seen her drink about six times as much as she's eaten lately.

I've got things to write about and thoughts to think-aloud; I'm just not sure when I'll get to them. But I'll try to at least post a kitty-update later today, after I brave the heat in the room with the scanner. (Forgot where I'd put the kitty photos when I scanned the tire. Found them since though.)

1. How are you planning to spend the summer?

Working, if my boss continues to have stuff for me to do; performing, mostly with The Homespun Ceilidh Band; going to The Pennsic War.

2. What was your first summer job?

Montessori school teacher's-aide, the summer between 7th and 8th grades. I didn't get paid, but my little brother got a break on tuition.

3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?

Hadn't thought about it much ... on a whim, I'll say Nova Scotia, 'cause I liked it there the one time I went, I've been meaning to get back for about twenty years, and I'm hoping it's cooler than here. Really it's just that a Nova Scotia landscape popped extremely vividly into my head when I read the question. Yeah, going there would be fun, as long as I timed it so I'd get back in time to prepare for Pennsic.

4. What was your worst vacation ever?

Um ... I'm not sure. I've not done a whole lot of what I think of as "vacations". Does Pennsic count? I think of that as a "special case", not really a "vacation"; but if you want to count Pennsic, well there's the year my fibromyalgia was acting up so badly that I barely got out of my tent all week. Otherwise ... maybe the family trip to one of the Great Lakes, which had some really nifty bits but also had pretty uncomfortable lodging and a persistent sense of "we don't know what's going on".

5. What was your best vacation ever?

Similarly as for #4, I'm not really sure. Maybe the childhood trip to Nova Scotia I mentioned before. Very beautiful scenery, met friendly folks, my first ever time in a rowboat, crossing the Bay of Fundi on the ferry, and stopping at damn hear every "Oooh look what pretty rocks!" spot along the road in Maine on the way back to climb around the rocks with my siblings. (That's the trip I think about whenever I hear the Jonathan Richman song, "Oh, New England".) Either that or one of the trips to Florida to visit my grandparents when they lived there, when we didn't also go to Disney World the same trip, and I discovered the joy of waking up on a cool Florida morning, plucking an orange off the tree, and jamming a straw in it to get my morning orange juice. The spur-of-the-moment weekend camping trip to Kitty Hawk with Mgrant goes on the good-vacations list somewhere a little further down, but worth mentioning in passing.