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2002-07-10
One of these days: I will return to writing more interesting weblog entries. Really.
You know, when I have like, leisure time. True leisure time, meaning that it's earned. Meaning that I have a job that can pay the rent and feed me and pay for my medical insurance.
These are things I cannot pay for right now. I can't afford squat. We're broke. Like, busted broke.
I went to a temp agency yesterday, and signed on with them. Not sure if they'll be able to get me anything, though. Sigh. This economy sure sucks.
Yesterday I went to the library, and got four books. One was "Interface Culture", which looked interesting in the library but seemed too hype-filled when I got home. The author seemed totally keen on showing off how well-read and smart he was, and he didn't seem to be making any real points. Bah. I flipped through it and I won't waste time reading it.
Another one was "Pragmatic Programming", which I thought would be good, but seemed to be common sense for managers of programmers, and it made me want to gag after flipping through it. Also goes to the "not gonna read it" pile.
The other two were on Greek mythology, and I made myself dizzy reading a *ton* and filling my head until it was so full that myths were spilling out my ears. I even *took notes* on 4 x 6 notecards. If that's not a sign that I'm crazy, I dunno what is. :)
Then I researched some mythy stuff on the web, until I felt really dizzy (and noticed how often people just plagiarize other sites). Also I learned that there are 23432433 versions of most of these myths, and that there is not "one true version" of most of them.
That is, there's only a fog of possibilities - these things changed so much over time, because different people had different points to make when they told the story, so they skewed it for their purposes, leaving parts out, embellishing other parts, and making stuff up because it suited them.
Kinda like modern times, only less trackable. :)
Anyway, that's what I learned yesterday. I feel I have a decent basic grounding in Greek myths, at least some of the most commonly known ones. Which is something I didn't have before. So I made progress.
[I notice myself using sentence fragments more these days. Part of me rebels, but the part of me that scans the text insists that the fragments make sense and are more readable than the otherwise achingly long and convoluted sentences that I tend to write. So that part is starting to win more. Good god, I'm starting to write more like David Foster Wallace. When I start using constructions like "line's end's end" instead of "end of the end of the line", please throw tomatoes at me until I come to my senses. End of digression.]
