when things happen to people, good or bad.
Last week featured one of the oldest gags in the book -- slurred speech due to emergency dental work. Somehow, Janney managed to avoid the cliches and find all the laughs, while blending into a tricky script with such unlikely laugh lines as ``a secret plan to end inflation.'' You had to be there; why weren't you?
What highly publicized antitrust trial has reached closing arguments?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
I'm not recovered -- I'm still a seriously spacy sleep-deprived chick. But that's okay.
Yesterday I took a nap and after four hours decided I should get up so that I didn't throw my sleep cycles totally off. I realize now this was a silly decision -- "let sleeping dogs lie" and all that. I didn't sleep particularly well last night, partially because I was up every hour or so to go to the bathroom (this is a much bigger part of the problem than you might a)expect or b)want to hear about) and because I was worried about waking up in time to get Mike up to go to the airport.
I know I've had a history of sleep problems, which probably hasn't helped my current state any. I finally called the doctor's office, and he said, "25 mg of Benadryl, one every 6 hours." So there you have it: the medical word. I think I bought Benadryl during the morning sickness phase; now I just have to find it.
I tried to nap at noon today but it was not to be, because Darin was on the phone to the home office, discussing whatever it is he discusses. Mind you, I heard the conversation; I just didn't understand any of it. I don't begrudge Darin discussing work as I'm trying to nap, as, after all, I am pretty much sleeping in his office. (Our downstairs is pretty much one big room: his office, the den, and our bedroom. The bedroom is separated by a door and a wall of closets, but neither the door nor the closets reaches all the way to the ceiling. It's all very loft-y and European, having been designed by a Scandinavian.)
The New York Times printed more than you want to know about what Darin's up to now. Yes, he took a permanent position several months ago, mostly because this was a chance to work with mentor Andy Hertzfeld again, not because he needed the job stability for Bug.
(I made a really bad joke recently about Darin's working with Linux -- "We're working on our own gnome project!" If Darin were into swatting, he'd have swatted me.)
Darin talked to Andy after the article came out and Andy said if he'd known the slant the article writer was going to take (emphasizing Apple people), he would have played up Darin's involvement in the company a lot more. Heh. Oh well, live and learn.
Darin's employee number one at the company, by the way. Whoo hoo! It doesn't actually mean anything, but it's fun to say.
Sarah Femme has an interesting entry today. I know Sarah in real life, I've heard some about what's going on in her life. She describes the difficulties she's going through beautifully. (Again, another person who has me thinking, Everyone's a real writer except me.)
She mentions something I've thought about before, with her, with other friends, with people whose lives are so radically different from my own:
What sort of bad karma did I generate, in perpetuity, it seems, to have to deal with this much emotional crap from all sides?!?!? Not to mention the professional (what profession) desires and demands, the financial (oh damn, that's right, I forgot to become a multimillionare) pressure, oh, and did I mention that I have two children who have circumstances that, with just one, would bring many to their knees in frustration and stress?
We've all thought about this. Every one of us has friends -- or perhaps we are one of the people -- who have ridiculously bad karma. I never know what to say to them or about their situation. Usually I commiserate helplessly. Sarah did not ask for the situation she's in now, with the separation from Sigo and the problems with her kids, struggling to get her life and career together. She's such an intelligent and talented person that there's no apparent reason for these things. I want there to be a reason. I want to be able to point to something and say, There is your problem, Sarah, simply remove that and everything will be all better. But it won't be. The universe is dumping on her at the moment.
It's tough not to say, "There must be some reason for this." Maybe it's our theistic culture. Our peculiarly American theistic culture, in which you are rewarded for being good and damned for being bad, usually financially, because money, not birth or "class," is the usual measure of a person around these here parts. Which is why hanging out in the Silicon Valley is so annoying these days -- these people think they've done something particularly noteworthy, when in point of fact they pretty much got lucky with stock market roulette.
When you try to see the reasons why people ended up with the lot in life they have, you are saying, in effect, I'm some great arbiter of what's a reasonable amount of sturm und drang in a person's life.
I admit to biblical thinking with some people I know. I have had friends who have been such bad karma magnets that eventually I've had to say, Whoa, you are doing this on purpose. Like my friend who's constantly ending up in cars with guys who try to take her somewhere she doesn't want to go. Once, okay. Twice is weird. Three times? I begin to doubt her people-judging skills. Or the veracity of her stories.
Or my co-worker at Apple, Amytal, who had something ungodly happen to him right before every deadline. Events that he was not doing to himself, at least not consciously...like getting beaten up on the streets of San Francisco and landing in the hospital with no memory of what had happened to him. He brought in the jacket he was wearing at the time of the attack, which was covered with his own blood. He thought that was cool. I lost any sympathy I might have had for him. I didn't think he'd gone looking to get the shit kicked out of him, but weren't there enough things he'd done in order to open himself to the possibility?
All of his reasons for missing deadlines weren't that dramatic, but there was always something. Always. Even life-threatening illnesses were intensely well-timed. I used to write down the timing of events with him, but I gave up after a while -- who would believe this?
With a couple of my friends I've gotten to the point where I say, Okay, what have you got for me now? Do I believe you? Are you just being a histrionic drama queen? How did you create this negative spot in your life?
It's easy to show up a problem with the "How did you create this negative space?" question by considering that the alternative is pretty ridiculous. I know my life is pretty good -- better than most people's, probably -- and I don't remember doing anything in particular to achieve it. Do I deserve the good things I experience any more than Sarah deserves the crap she has to deal with? Is the life we have really any more a result of who we are and choices we make than completely random happenstance?
By the way, when you keep hearing about how "classy" a guy John McCain is, please to remember he's the guy who had the "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" joke.
The answer to yesterday's question: The last time oil reached $30 a gallon was during the Gulf War. One of the differences between now and then is that we've achieved pretty much zero inflation with a hyper stock market, and this sharp rise in oil prices is going to force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in order to prevent inflation, which is going to effect the stock market.
Truckers demonstrated in Washington DC today in order to protest rising fuel prices. They want the government to open the Strategic Fuel Reserves, repeal the 24-cent federal excise tax, and instigate a rebate on fuel purchases.
The winter weather has also increased demand for heating oil sharply, thereby increasing prices.
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com