Perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.
-- J. G. Ballard
You Make It HappenWednesday, October 8, 1997 I swear I'll get some sleep! I am riding the bus tomorrow, which means getting up earlier since the ride takes longer than driving. I was driving home this afternoon through nasty rain. Just before reaching the 520 bridge, I realized that steam was rising from the hood and streaming behind the car! Adrenaline was rushing through my veins, since on the middle of a bridge with no lanes to pull off is one of the worst places to have car trouble! Luckily, someone had had a tree fall off a truck just ahead of me in the other lane, so once I was past that I could drive at a normal pace instead of inching along. I made it to the other side and took the first exit (which I would have taken anyway). I pulled into a parking lot, cursed heartily, then set off walking to the main road nearby, where I could catch a bus. I bused it up to my neighborhood and called the towtruck from the Texaco station where I have my car worked on. I thought they would have a towing service of their own, but they don't. I swear, the towtruck dispatcher was on some controlled substance or other. It would sound funnier if I said he was smoking crack, but I think it must have been a sedative type of medication. There were these long pauses, then he'd ask me to spell my name again! Finally I walked home. I wouldn't be able to get to my sister's for dinner, which was the original plan.
I made two posts today to a new discussion public folder (pf) at work. (A public folder is like an internal newsgroup.) This pf is restricted access. The woman who is organizing it wasn't happy with the caliber of discussion in the regular Singles pf, so had the idea of doing this private thing. As part of the getting acquainted thing, the organizer asked us to list the pf folders we had in the favorites part of our email program, and say why we were reading them. I have quite a few, more than most people did, and going through to list them (no automated way to do this, you have to type them manually!) was a good opportunity to remove some that have no traffic or don't interest me any more. During the process, I noticed that two different people listed the Singles Events folder, and said that there weren't many events posted currently, or not events that they were interested in, but that they kept the folder in case things picked up. This gave me the cue to go into my rant on making things happen. It's the same phenomenon in mailing lists, newsgroups, or real life: if the topics being discussed on the list aren't interesting to you, instead of complaining about that fact, start some new threads on topics that do interest you. If others agree, they will join you in the new thread. If they don't, they won't. It's the same thing in real life! Someone is boring you -- change the subject! Nothing fun to do -- start something! I tried to make it clear that I wasn't directing this specifically at them. It happens all over! Think of the number of people who have heard about Cacophony, as compared to the number that actually come to an event, or the even smaller number of people who sponsor one!
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