20060109   

Michael considered fate at 15:48   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

This will be the post that time forgot. Firstly, because I'm using a perfectly good computer connected to the perfectly good university network but, nevertheless, I am experiencing bandwidth speeds in the range of a 14.4 modem - remember what that was like? I bet you don't. It's funny this whole technology thing - the internet, mobile phones, satellite radio - things that would have seemed downright exotic and James Bond-ish to most of the public only a mere 20 years ago are now not only normal, everyday, but also expected. Demanded, even. What would people do now without instant-on communication? Do you remember dialup? You actually had to wait for the modem to dial before you could surf the "World Wide Web". What a cute phrase, leftover from those days when websurfing was so new there was no colloquial term for it. Now they invent new words just for the fun of it; podcast, blogosphere, WiFi, and people actually listen and pick these terms up and use them on the street, in coffee shops, on the bus, as if they were talking about things that have been around for ages, roast beef for dinner and bicycles for around-town transportation.

This will be the post that time forgot because it probably won't go through, what with the painfully slow connection I'm getting, and all will be lost, forgotten, sent out over the ether to float in the nothingness, never to be seen again..

Which means I can talk about whatever I damn well please.

Like my inability to sit down and actually do any real work. Like my obsession with production and my lack thereof. I actually tell myself often that if I had the time (or, alternately, when I have the time in the future) I would (will) paint, draw, bike, play more hockey, go to the gym more, cook more, write more. We can see how well it's working out, right? I'm a lost cause; gum on the underside of the table that just won't come off, hardened with age.

Secret admission: I have a sneaking suspicion that I have mono, or at least I think it would be a great excuse for my ability to stay in bed as long as I do on such frequent a basis.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you work, you realize that it really is about you - nobody else is going to notice unless you notice. If you don't toot your own horn nobody else will know there is a horn to toot. Self-realizing fame and fortune. I just hate tooting horns. Mine or anybody else's.

Perhaps others would say differently but in my little house-of-mirrors brain, I see my little midget-self all squished down in the glass, fat and pudgy and distorted, my face wide and flat like a stretched photoshop image. I see the flaws in the image and I can't help but admit it has flaws - it's so obvious - why doesn't everyone see it?

Also, but in a different room (tiny and twisted in which I feel cramped and stifled), there are mirrors that reach to the ceiling, bent outward, stretching my image to heights I could previously not even imagine. Tall and lanky, thinner than death but standing like a giant inside this tiny cramped space - looking bigger for it.

So it's hard to toot a horn when it's alternately short and squat or long and thin - you never know what you're going to get, a blunt and bassy frog-like belch or a squeaky metallic wail. Or something inbetween as my internal representations wrestle with themselves, morphing from one to the other, arms and legs intertwined in the mud of the brain - motions slow and slick, but too fast to follow with the naked eye.

The cold sweaty fever is seeping into my brain. My exclamation that I haven't been sick in years has caught up to me and I'm paying the sore and aching price of sleeping in my own pool of sweat, shivering silently in my over-heated state. Wonderful fun which I blame wholly for this rambling and incoherent discombobulation of a post.

Here's to getting back in the saddle.