Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From "What You Can't Say", an essay by Paul Graham about heresy and taboo, beliefs of past generations which seem ridiculous to us now, and how to try to spot the beliefs of our era which may seem silly to our descendants:

Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think.

[...]

I'm not arguing for or against this idea here. It is probably inevitable that parents should want to dress up their kids' minds in cute little baby outfits. I'll probably do it myself. The important thing for our purposes is that, as a result, a well brought-up teenage kid's brain is a more or less complete collection of all our taboos -- and in mint condition, because they're untainted by experience. Whatever we think that will later turn out to be ridiculous, it's almost certainly inside that head.

(Thanks to krikket for mentioning the essay.)

Okay, as y'all have noticed, this has been a really rough and frustrating week, simply on account of the uncooperativeness of my body and my resulting inability to accomplish jack s___. Today I decided to punt most of my to-do list from the start so I can rest and try to be in good shape for the performance tomorrow night, and I'll try to pick up the pieces on Monday and hope that no really brittle deadlines have been missed by then (and that one of the important things I've been putting off doesn't bite me in the ass in the meantime).

Today hasn't been as restful as planned -- I had another finger-glitch and lost more mail. This time I'm sure I'll get back everything I deleted. I think I've figured out the root problem in both events: trying to type too quickly with cold fingers and not noticing that a key hadn't gotten pressed far enough to register. ("d4-96" instead of "d84-96") So I need to a) remember to go a whole lot more slowly if I'm checking mail before I've turned the furnace on, and b) come up with ways of dealing with mail that are less prone to disaster when a finger slips. (Related to (b), I've got a download of CRM114 sitting on my file server waiting for me to have enough of an attention span to work out how to install it. If I'm not clearing away huge tufts of spam in order to be able to see my current messages, I won't be using the 'd' command with a range after it very often.)

To add to my frustration, there's someone who's needed my emotional support lately, whom I haven't been there for because I haven't managed to keep my own self together enough to even be here for myself. So, whether it's warranted or not, I've got this cloud of guilt layered on top of everything else. (She gives me a lot of help when she can; now she needs me and I'm too out of it to give back. This sucketh mightily.)

I'm tired of whining, so I probably won't say a whole lot more about how I'm doing until something makes it another level worse or something good happens that I can write about, but I wanted to get this state-of-D'Glenn report out there 'cause I know at least a few people are worried when I post bad stuff and then go quiet. I live; the parts I hurt avoiding crushing the cat's skull hurt but have receeded to fairly typical fibromyalgia-level pain; I'm not in a good mood; I'm trying to take things slowly enough to actually be restful but I suck at that (especially when I can hear the to-do list creaking and swaying and threatening to topple upon my head); I've got the wheat bags and lots of blankets (but never did manage to find a good place to put a microwave upstairs, which'll make the wheat bags more convenient if I ever rearrange enough to do that); and I now know that it takes about two hours for a 200 MHz 686 talking to a 120 MHz Pentium file server to 'csplit' a 340 MB file into 55000 pieces.

So I'll write about politics, or language, or philosophy, or cute silly things, or maybe get around to writing about what happened at the first recording session for the second CD, or I'll just shut up and read responses to QotD posts, until I'm feeling a little more on top of things.

As for the rest of the world: I'm sick; it'll have to cope. (Did I just hear somebody starting a betting pool for how many times I'll have to say that before I actually start acting like I believe it? Feh.)

Why can't I get any cool radio stations on the second floor?

WRNR comes in great in the car and pretty well in the kitchen (the receiver drifts, so it has to be tuned in again every so often when I start hearing oldies-masquerading-as-classic-rock or classic-rock-masquerading-as-oldies), but I cannot tune it in at all in the office or the bathroom.

A couple of months ago I discovered the Towson University radio station, not quite as cool as WRNR, but cool in a similar direction -- different enough to be good for variety. It comes in great in the car. It comes in well some days and so-so other days in the kitchen. And the best I can do in the office is a blurry, fuzzy signal that sounds like it's piped through the electronic equivalent of lint, to a torn speaker. (It's not the speaker -- adjacent stations are clear.) IIRC, I can't even get a really clean signal from WTOP-AM upstairs.

Isn't getting higher up supposed to help?

I can get classic-rock that repeats the same songs too often, country, conservative talk, probably 98-Rock if I look for it, some top-40 stuff, and "cool jazz" (which mostly means jazz dumbed down to be more like elevator music -- if I want to hear jazz, I want to hear jazz fercryinoutloud, and if you can mix in big-band era stuff along with the modern so much the better). And I can sortakinda tune in one or two NPR stations, but not quite cleanly. But not radio that I can turn on and listen to as background for hours and hours without getting bored or annoyed.

Maybe I should haul the Fisher upstairs, which has a pretty darned good tuner in it, to find out whether it's the location or the equipment. Only problems with that idea are that a) I'd have to rearrange the office to make room for it, b) I'd need somebody healthy to help me and I'd want my elbow to be in good shape first, and c) it's only good for about twenty minutes of clear sound before the marginal tube (I think it's one of the 12AX7 preamps but I could be wrong) gets hot enough for the sound to go all crackly. (I've wanted to completely re-tube it for years but have never had enough money at once. I should give up and just replace the two 12AX7s or the two main ... 6V6? 6L6? ... power amplifier tubes to see whether the crackle is coming from where I think it's coming from, and if that works, hope that everything else can hold out for another 42 years.

The damned thing sure is pretty though. And sounded really good before that tube went bad. I'd need to find something else to put in the front hall to sort mail and keep keys on, of course.

I hear a dog barking.

It's been barking and yelping for a while now. This took a little while to sink in. That's not an uncommon sound in the middle of the night in the summertime in my part of Baltimore. But it's January. It's supposed to get bitterly cold tonight. Snow has already fallen.

Who the &#@! left their dog outside now?