Some Days in the Life - May 12, 1999

Comments

Louise pointed out that I made it clear in yesterday's entry that she and I were not sleeping together, but that I said nothing about Greg and I. What I pointed out to Louise in return shouldn't be expressed publicly, when minors might write this. Logistically, it would be impossible as none of my cowriters are in the same state as I am (or each other, for that matter). Satisfied? Good.

Nerves. They're a vicious killer. I just checked the site, and it's got nothing yet. Sigh.

I wonder if Beverly Cleary ever felt like this.

It's a bright, sunny day. We've confirmed sightings of Apple Blossoms. If I didn't have (as the WCW announcers so adroitly put it) a busted wheel, I'd plan to be out walking them later today. As it is, I'll probably go for a long drive tonight, perhaps hooking up with some of the other nature lovers here on campus. We're a pretty close community here -- they've announced a book-reader's club for instance. Just a group of people who get together and discuss a book in common they're reading sort of thing. You know how it is.

This is yet another reason why working at a school like Brewster Academy is cooler than 'wherever it is you work.' Not that I'm pointing fingers. At most places, if a group of like minded people want to do some kind of activity in common, the place will probably let people put up a sign somewhere and maybe use the e-mail system to coordinate it and if they want to in the afternoons they might be able to leave ten minutes early and use the conference room if no one else needs it. Unofficially.

Brewster Academy lets you schedule time, use resources, and sometimes will even cater it. They want us doing non-work stuff. They want us developing as human beings. They want us to feel like Brewster's our home. It's like Microsoft's culture, only not creepy.

Look at the journal I'm doing. I generally do it on "work" time. (It's been late the last couple of days because Work's been hectic.) So long as I do what needs to be done, I can do side-projects to my heart's content. So, I'm a lot more willing to spend three extra hours in the evening working on stuff knowing that as a part of my morning I can annotate the previous day's stuff in my journal, taking twenty precious minutes out of the day to do so.

Of course, on days like today, I can't get eighteen words written without having to cope with one phone call or another coming in. (I actually had a five minute phone call between the words "call" and "or" in the last sentence.) So I'm not able to go into long essays on something or other right now -- the job's got me a little busy.

My foot is getting better, slowly but surely. Today it's stiff, but I can leave my tennis shoes on all day. Tomorrow I'm expecting to be able to do walks for exercise again. In the meantime, I'm just enjoying the fruits of spring.

I mentioned the WCW up above. Well, my usual Monday night fix of wrestling was preempted for NBA Basketball Finals (honestly -- does anyone on Earth care about the NBA finals this year?) so there wasn't any WCW. So, after avoiding for a while, I finally decided to tune in rival WWF for a little bit.

(I wasn't the only one. That night, WWF wrestling was the highest rated cable show in history. It utterly buried the NBA playoffs, and pulled in something like a nine rating. There are a lot of people like me in this world who need hobbies.)

So. I've now seen a good chunk of the WWF show.

I'm strongly considering never watching wrestling again, and I had to shower after I saw the part I saw. It made me feel that dirty.

Apparently, one woman had all her clothes torn off, leaving her in her underwear. I missed that part. Later on, we had a woman strip to the waist to distract a wrestler, to the tune of everyone in the house chanting "we want puppies," and the announcers shouting with the glee of a fourteen year old with his first Playboy "we've got puppies! She took it off! We see her puppies!" In another storyline, the Evil Son pandered his sister to the Evil Wrestler, arranging for her kidnapping and who knows what else. Finally, the World's Toughest Man fought the World's Toughest Woman and did a realistic job of hurting her.

Top rated cable show of all time, kids.

It was worse than sexist. It was juvenile. The wrestling wasn't all that good (one highlight of the night had two sixty year old men wrestling two non-wrestlers). The plotlines were at best sniggering, at worst trash. It was, in the end, sheer and utter crap.

WCW ain't high art. It's not even low art. But it's straightforward, "clean-cut" in comparison, the basic morality play structure. Violence to women is dealt with as a bad thing, unacceptable in any situation. At the same time, strong women don't need to tear off their clothes to "distract the good guy wrestler." I don't claim the Nitro Girls are role models, but at least they're a dance team, not strippers. (I won't even get into the guy who apparently plays a Pimp with Whores on the WWF show.)

In the end, I watch Pro Wrestling because it's fun. It's as much fun as watching South Park or the Teletubbies (which some of my college age and older friends do with hypnotic glee). It's mindless fun.

The WWF aren't fun. They're creepy. Apparently that works in the popular marketplace, but you couldn't pay me to tune it in again.

More new Journal information. The last of my Rialto cowriters, John Bankert, has started up his own and is doing well with it. I added him to the front page and took a few minutes to get the front page switched over to the new font sets.

Which was harder than I thought. Let me know what you think.

1:45 pm and no word on the prize. I expect that's a bad sign. We'll see.