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ArgumentI will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. |
   
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Wednesday, September 3, 1997
I love MTV's The Real World (Warning: this link may crash your browser, but it's the official site.). It has some of the same appeal as reading online journals does for me. Even though it's an artifical situation (seven strangers, picked to live in a converted Boston firehouse and have their lives taped) I am fascinated by the personalities that come through. I'll even confess to reading the newsgroup devoted to the show. The incredible skankiness of Syrus! the naïvté and gossipiness of Sean! Ooh, baby!
Carl was talking about meaning to make notes during the day for journal material. I feel the same way! It does give the effect of observing your life while living it, though. What I'd really like is to get a palmtop computer or small laptop, like Tracing has. Then I'd start taking the bus to work and type then, in the cool two-thumbs method she has developed. In other self-referential news, I almost used the same quote for this entry as for an entry in July. It seemed too familiar, so I checked, and sure enough! There it was.
I had a nice chat with Kris, my former officemate, tonight. He had to wait for them to bring the vegetarian pizza. Dinner is being served at work every weeknight now, since we are in crunch mode, and through some catering mishap, they brought a zillion pizzas, all of them meat-decorated. Kris was a good officemate, very helpful to me. He can perform the amazing trick of being asleep while sitting at his desk. I swear, you'd never know till you tapped him on the shoulder! When we moved to our current buildings in March, he got his own office since he'd just been hired full-time, and I got to move in to the Contingent Staff Group bay (that's Contractor Scum Ghetto to you and me).
Officemates can be very important. The fact that I shared an office with two testers when I first came to Microsoft was key to learning about things there. Testers always know what's going on, what the best tools are, all the tips and tricks. Four years later, I still call on those guys for help when I need it.
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I was rather perturbed by something that someone wrote in the singles public folder (pf, rather like a newsgroup) at work. The author is very articulate and has strong opinions, which aren't bad qualities. But-- she writes as if her opinions and personal preferences are universal, or should be. A lot of stuff about how she finds it offensive to see goodlooking women being approached by scruffy guys. A lot of fat-hating. Then defensively saying that somehow people always get the wrong idea about her: she's not saying that she's better than fat, lazy, bad-dressing people. But people should evaluate their attractiveness vis-a-vis the person they are attracted to, and not approach somone (her) if they aren't a match. (How someone is supposed to know her rating of their beauty ahead of time, I don't know.) Oh, and people who take issue with her in this area are probably insecure about their appearance. But she's not necessarily accusing anyone posting in the pf of being like that, she says. Well! this took some thought to respond to, but I managed it, quoting the language in her months of posts that bothers me. I finished off with a beautiful post that I had saved from the fat-acceptance newsgroup, by Siobhan Perricone.
I got some email thanking me for posting, which was very nice. I always try to do that when someone says something that I've been feeling, but couldn't get into words. If someone presses a hot button, it's tough to express myself clearly. I never have been thrilled with debate as a sport.
So I started a new thread, pointing to the Diary about Getting a Girlfriend as being on-topic for the folder. We'll see if anyone follows up tomorrow.
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