Thessaly's Tooth

The snow has finally receded enough from the patio to reveal that my bulbs are up! It’s Spring!

All of this DSL stuff will probably mean we are getting rid of cable, which means, to all intents and purposes, we are getting rid of TV. I confidently assured Andy that we could get bunny ear antennae for the TV and still get Arrested Development and so forth. But we all know that that might or might not be true. I had a TV with bunny ears for a while, and using it involved turning the TV itself as well as the bunny ears this way and that depending on what channel you were trying to get and what kind of weather we were having. It’s a challenge, and it keeps you from taking TV for granted–you get a workout while watching as you continuously adjust the television, your chair, and your position within the room.
The only other time I’ve lived in a place where I had regular access to cable television was my senior year in college, when the lounge TV was controlled by a cabal of females instead of the usual beer-drinking sports-watching males. (The lounge was actually habitable by persons in their normal states of consciousness because it was a substance-free dorm (meaning no drinking or smoking, obviously, not that we were ethereal. The folks in the Bill were the ethereal ones, having stolen actual ether from the bio department for…well, you know what for. Their particular brand of licentiousness was shut down shortly thereafter when the administration changed their dorm to all-female. I shouldn’t be telling this story), hence the upholstery had not been soaked with beer and even less pleasant semi-liquid matter which I don’t want to think about any more, thanks).
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cable. Our feminine cabal didn’t make particularly good use of it; I remember watching a good bit of a Tammy marathon one Saturday afternoon, for example. But though I’ve watched more than my share of TV over the years, I’ve hardly watched it at all here, for whatever reason. When I turn on the TV now, I can hardly stand the commercials–so many of them, and all so annoying. And the TV shows are not much better. I was reading on a blog the other day about how TV show writers have to “please the red-stater,” meaning they have to dumb down their content so that those mouth-breathing morons in the middle of the country won’t get mad becaue they’re too stupid to understand TV. Too stupid to understand TV…what a sad thought. And as a red-stater, I guess I should hold myself responsible for this unfunny waste of a gazillion dollars a year that would be of more use absolutely anywhere else. But I don’t, of course.
Hang on, how did this turn into a rant? I was talking about TV. I think. What was I talking about? Maybe watching too much TV really does have an affect on one’s attention…span…thingy…hey, a shiny thing!
p.s. Horrors, it looks like I linked you to the wrong “Tammy” earlier. Good thing I took plenty of time to click links on my own blog this afternoon, instead of working on my dissertation proposal that’s due next week. This grievous oversight has now been remedied.

This doesn’t sound that bad to me. Emotions are tiring, and for the most part I’m not sure what they’re good for. For example, this morning I was in a bad mood, but I didn’t feel like being in a bad mood so I tried to ignore it. But it just kept creeping up on me. Eventually, it dissipated. So, what was the point of all that? I ask you.

I like taking buses. You can meet interesting people, eavesdrop on some interesting conversations, and see interesting parts of the city. True, some of these are more “interesting” than interesting. For example, you can find yourself involved in the oddest conversations without warning and with no effort on your part. Like the time I was standing waiting for the bus, and some guy walked up to me and abruptly started telling me all about his teeth, and the various dental work he’d had done recently. Then there was the fellow who appeared at the bus stop and started giving me job-search advice, stopping occasionally to inform me that he looked like Walter Matthau (he sort of did) and that he should “marry a woman.” Well okay.
In Lincoln, there was this local cult-type thing which aggressively proselytized to people, buttonholing them on the street and peppering them with questions about their spiritual life. One of three times this happened to me was while I was waiting for the bus–annoying, I couldn’t escape until the bus came. Simply assuring these people that I was a Christian and had a church wasn’t enough, they were determined to find out all about my religious practices. The other two times I can remember encountering them was (1) while innocently walking down the street and (2) at a new job I had when someone from that church acted like they wished to befriend me–really just wanted me to join the church. This is exactly the sort of thing that made me not want to be a Christian before I was one, so good thing I already was by that time, I guess.
But, back to the bus. I’ve taken the bus to work twice in the last two weeks. I’ve already found myself involved in one peculiar conversation, and have stood witness to many others. I’ve been through parts of GR I’ve never seen before in my nearly two years here, including some that I want to explore more. And, the bus would give me plenty of time to sit and read, if I could ever remember to bring a book.

A week or so ago, I told Andy about a specific concern that I wanted to start praying about. Less than two days later, we had an Answer. Not an answer we were expecting, and not one which provided an answer to the exact question, but one which pointed in a slightly different direction and gave us both hope. A pretty good kind of answer. Just wanted to let you all know, and may continue to blog about it as the situation develops. (It’s a pretty uninteresting issue, so I felt free to not explain exactly what it is since you aren’t missing anything).

For several months I have been made to feel more bemused than festive by the unseasonably early onset of the various holiday seasons. I did not feel like purchasing Halloween candy in August, Santa-themed gift items in late October, Valentine’s Day paraphernalia in early January, or St. Patrick’s Days stuff…at any time, really. I’m a St. Patrick’s Day agnostic, I guess. The man himself is pretty interesting, as was his confession. But St. Patrick’s day isn’t.
I’m no more Irish than Patrick himself was, and while I have no problems with Ireland or the holiday, I have no interest in dressing in green (not flattering), messing about with representations of leprechauns (creepy little things), or eating corned beef and cabbage (doesn’t sound very good). Furthermore, I’m not a big fan of beer or of dying the Chicago River green, since it already is anyway. Besides, by this time I’m pretty tired of doing things about holidays. Let me know when July 4 is coming, and I’ll do something about that, maybe–but perhaps I spoke to soon, probably when I go to Meijer today I’ll find patriotic gift bags and firecracker-shaped candles confronting me.