|
|
|
temperature trends like the stock market
Monday, October 7 2002
The weather is behaving a little more autumnal with each passing day. The decline in temperature is a halting process, with occasional temporary reversals. In many ways its downward progress resembles that of the stock market. Every time I think about the stock market, though, the thought is immediately replaced with a burning desire to participate in the invasion of Iraq. Seriously, though, won't it be an interesting world when advertisers and governments can directly intercept thoughts unhelpful to commercial and political purposes?
Tonight I paid a house call to a tiny ancient woman with liquor on her breath. Judging by the number of Untitled Folders on her Macintosh desktop, I could tell she knew next to nothing about using a modern graphical user interface. Her main problem seemed to be that whoever had installed her replacement external modem had failed to actually plug it into the telephone line.
On my way home I found the stem of an ancient cast iron bathroom vanity, and, thinking it might be able to play some role in the Hurley house, I carried it home. It must have weighed at least fifty pounds.
Meanwhile out in Los Angeles, a terrible thing has befallen Gretchen's friend Annie. She let some random slacker dude stay at her house for several weeks completely rent-free, something she thought she owed to the universal karmic fabric given the number of times she's crashed rent-free at the homes of others. Well, it turned out that her new couch surfing housemate was something of a bad apple, because when Annie returned from a weekend spent at her new boyfriend's house, she found the slacker had vanished along with all 900 of her CDs and a stack of some 300 vinyl albums, her entire life's savings of music. Being a musician herself, this was a devastating loss for Annie. She did manage to recover a few odd CDs from a record store where the slacker had traded them in for cash, but most of them are still out there somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area.
Mind you, it's not like this asshole slacker was just blowing through town. He's from Los Angeles, and Annie and he actually have a few friends in common. What is he going to say for himself when he's inevitably confronted? The way I see it, a guy (with the possible exception of Rory) never acts this way unless he feels he's been wronged. My first guess was that he was upset because Annie wouldn't have sex with him. In the strange mental climate of rejection, it wouldn't be impossible to justify theft even on such wanton scale.
In an effort to help Annie restore her music collection, Gretchen has given me a huge stack of her music, mostly by black female artists. I'm ripping it all to MP3s and I'll be burning it to a couple of CDs. It's not a perfect replacement, since it's nowhere near 900 CDs, and it will probably require a new MP3-playing CD player on Annie's end, but it's the best that can be done on such short notice. Gretchen had plans to fly out to Los Angeles in the middle of next week anyway, so she'll be able to deliver the music by hand. The best thing of all about this crisis is that Annie still owns the license to the stolen music, meaning it's perfectly legal for her to replace it with copies sent by friends.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?021007 feedback
previous | next |
