Pointless, Personal Blathering - Feel Free to Skip Over ...

[ed_rex]

• I am tired. Three or four hard-drinking nights in a row, then a long day with my brilliant niece today and an hour or two before Laura and I head out to 5ive - yes, a club and yes, I'm dressing up, and yes, I'm kind of nervous about it. Laura bounces from assuring me there's nothing to fear to giggling maniacally.


• I quit smoking for almost a full day this week.


• Work is thoroughly demoralizing and I recently realized I need a break from it. Though we can't afford it, Laura and I will be doing a road trip, not this coming week but the one following. Look out Ottawa, Montreal and - maybe - Quebec City!


• I have a lot I want to do and a number of things to say but ... have I mentioned that I'm very tired?


• Thursday, I commented on a rare political post by crankygrrl about the situation in Iraq. She didn't respond but someone named redstarrobot posted a couple of thoughtful, if disagreeing, replies to my remarks. I managed a response to his first, but when I tried to answer his rebuttal I found that both of us had been deleted from her friends' list. People often confuse me.


• I am making an effort to read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first volume of his System of the World trilogy, which promises - if nothing else - to be quite probably the longest book I'll have ever read. The first volume is roughly 1,000 pages, set in very small type and at a guesstimate, it clocks in at close to half a million words.
  
  I am currently somewhere around page 250 and have yet to have a clue as to what the plot is going to be, or even if it has one. It's a little intimidating, to say the least, but it has so far been by turns interesting and sometimes funny, so I will keep at it for a while yet.
  
  I am pondering posting a running commentary as I get through it.


• I think Laura is just about through primping and preening (yes, she looks delectable!), so it is just about my turn to perform the requisite ablutions. Goodnight.

Comments

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

Hey, you post so rarely these days why would we skip over the personal blathering?

I know what you mean about some people getting funny on LJ about what they consider proper use of their journal. I had a similar experience recently with someone that got upset that I was 'hijacking' her journal by having a conversation with someone that posted a comment. I ended up leaving her friends list before she banned me over it, we weren't hitting it off anyhow. Probably should have friended the person I was having the conversation with.

Personally I think of my journal as a bit of a house party or dinner affair where my friends are all invited. If a conversation gets going in one of my posts in the comments as long as the debate is polite, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, hell I think its a good way to meet other people through comments in some one elses journal.

Enjoy the road trip. I really wanted to go to Ottawa and Montreal this year. No luck. The closest thing I am getting to a vacation this summer is a road trip home to Northern Ontario.

Have fun at the club.

Oh, and I like the idea of a running commentary book review. Could be fun.

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience recently with someone that got upset that I was 'hijacking' her journal by having a conversation with someone that posted a comment.

In this case, I have no idea whether it was the fact a conversation was happening in her journal, or it was that particular conversation that led to our mutual banishments. Either way, it leaves me baffled.

In any event, I fully agree with your view of digressive conversations in my own journal; it reminds me of the good old days, when (a very few) usenet groups were marvellous places to hang out.

[touch-my-skin.livejournal.com]

Are you aware that tonight is the Fetish night at 5ive?

Unless I'm mistaken.

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

So I understand. Laura is making me attend.

heheh

[queenofdemons.livejournal.com]

my coworker bounces there - wish I'd read this last night to tell him to give you guff for a sec. ;-)

ahh ever the interplanetary prankster


btw - I say MORE pointless blatherings!!!!

Re: heheh

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

More pointless blatherings? All in good time, my dear. (Besides, some people think all my entries are just that.)

[vienneau.livejournal.com]

I am making an effort to read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first volume of his System of the World trilogy,...

Keep us updated on how good it is. It sounds like a Sci-Fi book? I'm always looking for long series (1000 pages is a treat!) that are well-written.

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

So far, at least, it reads as historical fiction with an SF sensibility; that is, the lead character is the son of a Puritan who somehow lost his faith hanging with people like Newton and Robert Hooke - in fact, with the nascent Royal Society in general - and who, as an old man, has made a life in Boston as an inventor. By SF sensibility then, I mean that rather than a focus on politics and the love lives of kings and queens, Stephenson seems to be examining the origins of what we now call the scientific method, with politics a necessary evel and - so far - sex almost non-existent.

By the way, I used to loathe the term, Sci-Fi ("skiffy"), but I have given up that battle in my old age, as I have the correct pronounciation of the word, sauna ("sow-a-na", if you care).

[pbprincess.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I have the last two books in the series having borrowed the first from a friend. Iffen you wanted to borrow them, you'd be welcome to.

I found them a little convoluted and um, needlessly long? but enjoyed them none the less, esp. since I'm a geek about the history of science and the 17th C in general.

Also I am now moved in and able to make plans to meet at your earliest convenience. You can email me at either paperbag_princess7@yahoo.ca or lisagoegan@hotmail.com as you see fit. :)

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Thanks on the books - I have the first two (picked 'em up, cheap, at the Giant Book Sale that seems relatively permanently ensconsed on the North side of Queen, near the Horseshoe), but might take you up on the third, presuming I make it that far.

"Convoluted" is definitely at least one appropriate adjective. I recall an 8 or 10 page scene, in which the narrator and (I think) Newton haggle with a Jewish trader. I have no idea whether or not the trader will show up again; at this point, the scene served only to introduce the Plague to London.

I have a feeling that my earliest convenience will be towards the end of the month - in any event, next time we ought to at least sit down for a drink. I'll make sure I don't have a panic at the office.

[pbprincess.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right. The drink and the chat, I mean.

(and I don't remember the jewish trader showing up again...but I may have slipped a link somewhere; in any case if he does show up, it's not obvious he's the same guy at all. The haggling is important because of the money involved: money is one of the obsessions of these books.)

[offermeescape.livejournal.com]

I hope you had a grand time at the club, dear Geoffrey. Right now you're probably still in bed, holding your head in your hands and wishing you hadn't gone out drinking for a 5th night. ;) It's admirable that Laura can persuade you to do that.. at my ripe age of 24, most people can never persuade me to go to clubs anymore.. did you have a good time?

People on livejournal can be such cranky assholes. I hate it when people play games like that.. as if being on their friends list means the world to you or something.. sure, it means something but you're not going to cry about it. It's immature and high school-ish, really.

Any chance we can hit the town before you go on that well deserved trip?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, I awoke feeling fine, if a little sore. Had a leisurely if intense (I'll leave the precise nature of the intensity to your imagination) morning, then an even more leisurely (and delicious!) brunch at Mezzrow's.

I actually had a great time at the club. Surprise, surprise, dancing can be fun!

As for hitting the town, let me see how things shape up - I'll drop you a line mid-week (and if I don't, give me a call; too often I let these things slide. I seem to have an aversion to making plans).

[offermeescape.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Dancing is only fun for me when it's music I actually like, unfortunately, otherwise I fake it and I hate doing that.

I'll be very busy mid week, so if you drop a line and I don't catch it right away, don't worry.

I think we should go out Friday after 6.

I'll call you by then if i don't hear from ya. :)

[ssurprize.livejournal.com]

I thought of commenting, because in this post there are a lot of topics to chose from :)

I'll start with "Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver". How fast of a reader are you, say, how long did it take you to read those first 250 pages?

I'm not going to say anything about the club, I'm not a club person so I wouldn't know anything about it.

Being un-friended because of a converstaion with someone else by way of comments has bever happened to me, and I don't find it disturbing if a conversation occurs in my own journal. But I've heard others - ok, a particular other- that she finds it annoying when such conversations start below her posts, mostly because they have nothing to do with it (like, they start with "I love your icon!") and because they occur more than often. Anyway. This has nothing to do with your case, because your conversation was relevant.

And I suppose quitting smoking for a full day is progress, no? Well, keep it up!

As for being tired, you couldn't have said it better; Goodnight.

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I'm a pretty quick reader (I did the last three volumes of Harry Potter in three days). I didn't go nearly as quickly through the first bit of Quicksilver - because the narrative is so leisurely it's easy to put down for a while, and I did so more than once. But when I get back to it, it shouldn't take me more than a week or so.

As for tangential conversations in one's journal, objecting to it baffles me. Do you think those kinds of people get offended because their egos are hurt?

Goodnight to you, too. :)

[ssurprize.livejournal.com]

As for tangential conversations in one's journal, objecting to it baffles me. Do you think those kinds of people get offended because their egos are hurt?
I'll never know, because noone will admit it. As for the particular person I mentioned, she just says "they should do this somewhere else". But as I said, hers is a different case.
[...]
I gave it a long thought and I just couldn't imagine my ego getting hurt by this. I just read the conversation and think whether I would interrupt if I replied to their comments, so I live it be. No ego in me I guess. At least not in the internet :)
But if I imagine a real-life situation, that is hanging out with a couple of friends, where I mention something and the other two start conversing about it, leaving me out, that would hurt my ego. But this can't happen, or really rarely, because if I'm there, I suppose, I'll say something myself. Anyway.

When I make long sentences like that, I feel that my imperfect English becomes senseless...

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I don't think the analogy to being edged out of a three-way conversation holds water. After all, it's not like one is sitting around, twiddling one's thumbs while a side-conversation rages in your journal.

Your English, by the way, was far from senseless.