i have little doubt
Jan. 25th, 2007 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I have little doubt that I will be called away in the midst of writing this to go and drive Z to work, because he left the house to catch the bus quite late. I always leave ten minutes early even though it only takes me one and a half to walk to my stop, but Z's bus being earlier and he being by habit more efficient, he has his morning loginess to cope with, and the result is that he always leaves himself a minute to walk six blocks, and has to do it at a frantic run. It hasn't happened in a while, but for a time I was getting a call every other time he set out to catch the bus: "I missed it," pant pant, "I need a ride."
Which, on the one hand, it's only five miles. I can drive him there and it's not like I'm using up a ton of gas.
But on the other hand, it's 20 minutes in and 20 minutes back, and then I'm 40 minutes behind on the things I was going to do that day (because about 40 minutes of navel-gazing and email checking-- see what I'm doing right now-- is kind of important to my mental space). Today I'm planning on doing a lot of things before work, and also I feel absolutely wretched, so I'm probably a lot more resentful at the prospect than I would otherwise be. (I woke up early to make sure he got up, and have been getting things ready and chivvying him along to do them, in a very careful fashion as I know I myself hate being chivvied and so does he, so it's been a careful morning, especially as he wound up saying something rather insensitive and I snapped at him.)
The moment of truth draws near; and yet, if he doesn't have his cellphone to warn me, the moment may pass and I may not know until he comes trudging wearily back up the drive. So I am falsely relieved at the moment.
I am head-full of sinus-painy goo, with intermittent unstoppable but unproductive coughing. It makes me humorless. It's kept happening at work, which is excruciating, especially as we are Not Allowed to have drinks (I don't mean booze; we've never been allowed booze and I haven't really minded) behind the bar with us-- which means, no sip of water to ease a coughing fit while I get someone's change, etc. I have to go out from behind a bar with a drink of something, which more than doubles the time it takes to take a sip of water, which often prices it out of my range in terms of time I can expend.
My corporate overlords would be much better served by devoting their efforts toward perfecting robots to do my job rather than having endless stupid sessions on alcohol awareness and corporate-defined hospitality seminars.
************
Last night![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jonquil posted a link to a Christian website who was conducting a huge Modesty Survey.
It's a survey about modesty targeted toward Christian "guys", and "girls" aren't allowed to take it. So I forwarded it to Z, because, well, dude, he's a Christian guy, right? He went to Catholic school for 13 years and while he won't go to Mass with me nowadays, he hasn't exactly forsworn the whole thing. So sure.
Hilarity ensued.
To analyze it humorlessly, the problem I had with the entire thing was the carelessness with language. Not so much carelessness, I suppose, as a complete disregard for the actual, English meanings of words. The whole thing had been so extensively jargoned that it didn't know it was jargon, and there was no way for those of us who speak Standard English to even know where to begin in parsing the phrases to yield something we could understand.
Add in a cultural difference, and you've got a recipe for complete incomprehension. Which is a problem I've often faced in these sorts of things-- the Christian group on my campus sponsored a "debate" on evolution, which was well-promoted and in the event was very, very well attended. A lot of my friends went-- and at that point, due to having a roommate from Madras, I had a lot of Indian/Subcontinental friends. So a number of Muslims attended this event-- quite religious Muslims, in some cases.
And the Christians, disappointingly, refused to actually *listen* to any cases presented by these other people with fascinating viewpoints-- at that time, I had no idea what a devout Muslim believed in the Creationism/Evolution debate. Unfortunately, I still don't, as the debaters wouldn't engage him but instead kept quite literally thumping their Bibles. (I am not making that up. This girl kept hitting the damn thing with her hand, and I wanted to snatch it away and snap, "Treat it with some respect!" but I restrained myself. Unwisely-- but I was 19, and a bit shy. Also I was wearing Doc Martens with laces that said "pervert" over and over, but nobody noticed. Again, I was 19.)
This whole survey is founded upon an assumption that I, and Z, don't share. He approached it from a point of view of agreeing with what they were saying, or what he thought they were saying. Modesty is important and he appreciates a modestly-dressed woman-- er, sorry, "girl". Although the first thing he did was type "modesty" into his dictionary widget to see if it meant what he thought it meant.
("The quality or state of being unassuming or moderate in one's estimation of one's abilities"; "behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency")
Since the questions were all about chicks' clothing, he viewed it from the point of view that a "stumbling block" meant that certain styles of dress or appearance made it hard for him to take the chick in question seriously as a person, because she was dressed distractingly like a hobag. The nature of his own response-- disgust, confusion, arousal-- was immaterial. And it was fascinating to watch him take the survey from this point of view, because he was doing so in complete sincerity and earnestness. ("Sincerity is the new sarcasm," he explained earnestly.) He objected to big hoopy earrings because they're tacky; he objected to heavy eye makeup because it's hard to pay attention to what someone's saying when she looks like a raccoon; he did not object to mascara because he doesn't generally even notice it, although he admits it does bring out the eyes attractively in some cases (when I demonstrated what the stuff was).
When I finally explained to him that "stumbling block" meant that it impeded the survey taker's virtuous living of his life, Z freaked out a little. (See above email.)
But, as he commented in his journal, he'd been operating on the assumption that his response to the woman's clothing was his own problem. Yes, a woman shouldn't dress in a way that shows disrespect to herself and the people she's speaking to-- like, tacky hoopy earrings-- but if she wants to look hot that's her own lookout [and by that I mean, it's up to her to choose what suits her best, and if someone has a problem they can just not look], was the assumption Z had been operating on.
Which was fascinating. But I digress, and I've probably sucked all the humor out of what was an absolutely hilarious situation.
Over dinner, previously, Z and I had discussed politics, and he had expressed some hopefulness at the current situation. I've taken a years-long virtual hiatus from discussing politics with occasional breaks, because it just makes me so mad. It still makes me mad, but Z's hopefulness stemmed from the fact that the changed constitution of Congress now makes it possible for members to deviate from the rigid party lines, and that means that perhaps something can actually get done.
Which is a good point.
Anyway. Z has apparently made the bus, which means I can get into the shower, thank God. (I am fairly grody at the moment. As grody as I get, anyway. I don't think it's vain or naieve of me to say that I generally tend not to get stinky-- none of my housemates has ever complained and believe me, Z would.)
Today I have high hopes to make excellent progress on Barbarians Novel, which is going really well but, as ever, frustratingly slowly. I might make a little page for it showing the evolution of the first chapter, which would probably be pretty interesting. To me at least.
Oh, and it turns out that my fourth-grade boyfriend that I just found on Myspace? Also a frustrated aspiring novelist with a bunch of manuscripts in varying stages of completion. How interesting! He wasn't a writer when I last knew him, but given that I lost touch with him in eighth grade, when I was only just beginning to really write (and wasn't telling people about it-- I started in seventh grade but it was very secret), it's not surprising.
Which, on the one hand, it's only five miles. I can drive him there and it's not like I'm using up a ton of gas.
But on the other hand, it's 20 minutes in and 20 minutes back, and then I'm 40 minutes behind on the things I was going to do that day (because about 40 minutes of navel-gazing and email checking-- see what I'm doing right now-- is kind of important to my mental space). Today I'm planning on doing a lot of things before work, and also I feel absolutely wretched, so I'm probably a lot more resentful at the prospect than I would otherwise be. (I woke up early to make sure he got up, and have been getting things ready and chivvying him along to do them, in a very careful fashion as I know I myself hate being chivvied and so does he, so it's been a careful morning, especially as he wound up saying something rather insensitive and I snapped at him.)
The moment of truth draws near; and yet, if he doesn't have his cellphone to warn me, the moment may pass and I may not know until he comes trudging wearily back up the drive. So I am falsely relieved at the moment.
I am head-full of sinus-painy goo, with intermittent unstoppable but unproductive coughing. It makes me humorless. It's kept happening at work, which is excruciating, especially as we are Not Allowed to have drinks (I don't mean booze; we've never been allowed booze and I haven't really minded) behind the bar with us-- which means, no sip of water to ease a coughing fit while I get someone's change, etc. I have to go out from behind a bar with a drink of something, which more than doubles the time it takes to take a sip of water, which often prices it out of my range in terms of time I can expend.
My corporate overlords would be much better served by devoting their efforts toward perfecting robots to do my job rather than having endless stupid sessions on alcohol awareness and corporate-defined hospitality seminars.
************
Last night
jonquil posted a link to a Christian website who was conducting a huge Modesty Survey.It's a survey about modesty targeted toward Christian "guys", and "girls" aren't allowed to take it. So I forwarded it to Z, because, well, dude, he's a Christian guy, right? He went to Catholic school for 13 years and while he won't go to Mass with me nowadays, he hasn't exactly forsworn the whole thing. So sure.
Hilarity ensued.
Yeah, I think maybe I need to have my answers reset. 'Cause when you said 'stumbling block,' I thought, 'something that makes me think a particular woman is a hoebag.' I did not realize it meant 'something that makes me want to whack off.'
I would just like to make it clear that large boots in the manner that my sixth-grade math teacher [who was a nun] wore - do not, under any circumstances, make me touch myself.
Thank you.
To analyze it humorlessly, the problem I had with the entire thing was the carelessness with language. Not so much carelessness, I suppose, as a complete disregard for the actual, English meanings of words. The whole thing had been so extensively jargoned that it didn't know it was jargon, and there was no way for those of us who speak Standard English to even know where to begin in parsing the phrases to yield something we could understand.
Add in a cultural difference, and you've got a recipe for complete incomprehension. Which is a problem I've often faced in these sorts of things-- the Christian group on my campus sponsored a "debate" on evolution, which was well-promoted and in the event was very, very well attended. A lot of my friends went-- and at that point, due to having a roommate from Madras, I had a lot of Indian/Subcontinental friends. So a number of Muslims attended this event-- quite religious Muslims, in some cases.
And the Christians, disappointingly, refused to actually *listen* to any cases presented by these other people with fascinating viewpoints-- at that time, I had no idea what a devout Muslim believed in the Creationism/Evolution debate. Unfortunately, I still don't, as the debaters wouldn't engage him but instead kept quite literally thumping their Bibles. (I am not making that up. This girl kept hitting the damn thing with her hand, and I wanted to snatch it away and snap, "Treat it with some respect!" but I restrained myself. Unwisely-- but I was 19, and a bit shy. Also I was wearing Doc Martens with laces that said "pervert" over and over, but nobody noticed. Again, I was 19.)
This whole survey is founded upon an assumption that I, and Z, don't share. He approached it from a point of view of agreeing with what they were saying, or what he thought they were saying. Modesty is important and he appreciates a modestly-dressed woman-- er, sorry, "girl". Although the first thing he did was type "modesty" into his dictionary widget to see if it meant what he thought it meant.
("The quality or state of being unassuming or moderate in one's estimation of one's abilities"; "behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency")
Since the questions were all about chicks' clothing, he viewed it from the point of view that a "stumbling block" meant that certain styles of dress or appearance made it hard for him to take the chick in question seriously as a person, because she was dressed distractingly like a hobag. The nature of his own response-- disgust, confusion, arousal-- was immaterial. And it was fascinating to watch him take the survey from this point of view, because he was doing so in complete sincerity and earnestness. ("Sincerity is the new sarcasm," he explained earnestly.) He objected to big hoopy earrings because they're tacky; he objected to heavy eye makeup because it's hard to pay attention to what someone's saying when she looks like a raccoon; he did not object to mascara because he doesn't generally even notice it, although he admits it does bring out the eyes attractively in some cases (when I demonstrated what the stuff was).
When I finally explained to him that "stumbling block" meant that it impeded the survey taker's virtuous living of his life, Z freaked out a little. (See above email.)
But, as he commented in his journal, he'd been operating on the assumption that his response to the woman's clothing was his own problem. Yes, a woman shouldn't dress in a way that shows disrespect to herself and the people she's speaking to-- like, tacky hoopy earrings-- but if she wants to look hot that's her own lookout [and by that I mean, it's up to her to choose what suits her best, and if someone has a problem they can just not look], was the assumption Z had been operating on.
Which was fascinating. But I digress, and I've probably sucked all the humor out of what was an absolutely hilarious situation.
Over dinner, previously, Z and I had discussed politics, and he had expressed some hopefulness at the current situation. I've taken a years-long virtual hiatus from discussing politics with occasional breaks, because it just makes me so mad. It still makes me mad, but Z's hopefulness stemmed from the fact that the changed constitution of Congress now makes it possible for members to deviate from the rigid party lines, and that means that perhaps something can actually get done.
Which is a good point.
Anyway. Z has apparently made the bus, which means I can get into the shower, thank God. (I am fairly grody at the moment. As grody as I get, anyway. I don't think it's vain or naieve of me to say that I generally tend not to get stinky-- none of my housemates has ever complained and believe me, Z would.)
Today I have high hopes to make excellent progress on Barbarians Novel, which is going really well but, as ever, frustratingly slowly. I might make a little page for it showing the evolution of the first chapter, which would probably be pretty interesting. To me at least.
Oh, and it turns out that my fourth-grade boyfriend that I just found on Myspace? Also a frustrated aspiring novelist with a bunch of manuscripts in varying stages of completion. How interesting! He wasn't a writer when I last knew him, but given that I lost touch with him in eighth grade, when I was only just beginning to really write (and wasn't telling people about it-- I started in seventh grade but it was very secret), it's not surprising.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-25 08:12 pm (UTC)KW