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torrent of rambling missives
Wednesday, July 24 2002
Gretchen couldn't get to sleep last night because she was pissed off about Crazy Jane's obstruction of necessary repairs to the plumbing over our bathroom. So she communicated in the manner most dear to Jane, writing a letter detailing why it was important for us to deal with this matter without delay.
This had the effect of unleashing a torrent of rambling missives throughout the day.
Today Gretchen and I brainstormed about the name of a new business I am going to start. I intend to take advantage of the huge numbers of computers installed in Park Slope and offer my services fixing them, since computers are so notoriously unreliable and since the people operating them do not (by and large) really know what they are doing. This would be, I think, a fairly lucrative way to put my computer skills to use. It will also allow me to do my part for T.I.P.S. At first I wanted to call my company laidoffdotcomguy.com (the domain is avaliable), but after talking to some of her friends, Gretchen said she thought it sounded too desperate. So my next idea was Geek Mystique, which looks even better on paper than it does when spoken.
In the evening, Gretchen and I went down to Seventh Avenue to check out Amin, the brand new Indian restaurant opening tonight near the corner of 7th and Union Street. Gretchen had told her friends about it and by now our contingent had swelled to include two other couples: Ray and Nancy and Lin and Mark, all of whom we met in front of the restaurant. We were told the wait would be over a half hour, but we were willing to wait.
When we finally took our seats, it was at a "very congested" table (so our authentically South Indian host warned us). For a restaurant with genuine white tablecloths, the menu prices were most reasonable. We ordered two bottles of wine and both were well under twenty dollars.
I ordered the Tandoori Shrimp (which, though tasty enough, the portion was - I dare say - a little on the small side). In general I think we all agreed that the food was bland for Indian food, but this probably reflects a desire on the part of the staff to appeal to the mostly non-Indian Park Slope population. The restaurant was so busy tonight that even the people coming to pick up their takeout were standing in a long line, and our service was spotty at times. Nonetheless, having an Indian restaurant within walking distance, I'm sure we'll be going back plenty in the future.
Dinner conversation was hilarious throughout. Lin's boyfriend Mark is full of surprises. Initially he comes off as a spacey pot-smoking Californian surfer dude, but tonight he launched into this well-informed schpiel about the how the country is being destroyed by corporations and the politicians they've bought. Suddenly Mark realized we were missing tonight's Donahue on MSNBC, the only left-leaning show on cable. "It's going to be Donahue with Nader and a thousand fired Enron employees!" he exclaimed, the focus of his eyes going momentarily distant, as if observing mass anti-corporate action from atop a grassy knoll. "Maybe there'll be rioting outside the studios!" I exclaimed.
Periodically Mark injected witty little expressions that he surely must have received as part of his California birthright. My favorite from tonight's dinner was "Talk to the hand 'cause the wrist is pissed!"
Later, back at home, Gretchen and I were experiencing "client-mediated interleaved televison programming," flipping back and forth between the rerun of Donahue and our usual 11:00pm favorite, Comedy Central's The Daily Show. It wasn't a perfect system, partly because both channels appeared to have their commercial breaks synchronized.
Watching Donahue, I got the feeling from looking at that audience of pissed-off Enron employees (riled-up by an unusually eloquent Ralph Nader) that it wouldn't take too much more corporate crookedness for rioting to erupt in the streets of Houston, ground zero of the great American Goodoleboyocracy.
This brings us to an important point: when a political system is so compromised that corporations are able to fleece everybody (and even hack into our computers), it no longer matters what the law says or that it is legal for them to do so if people start running riot. The reason to have laws promoting economic justice is not (as we're taught in civics class) "because it's right" - it's because to do otherwise promotes social unrest. Remember, part of the reason there's a Great Society social welfare safety net at all is that in the late 60s cities were on fire. Sometimes in order to get satisfaction from your government, you have to bypass the corrupt political system and threaten the buildings, property, and very lives of the Man. Predictably enough, the Man will call this terrorism, but remember America was gleefully founded on terrorism.
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