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absolutely read this one
Nov. 6th, 2004 09:14 amExit polls, actually results, and electronic voting machines.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/timiathan/141841.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/timiathan/141841.html
Nov. 6th, 2004
(no subject)
Nov. 6th, 2004 09:46 amIt's almost amazing I didn't get into riding just for the clothes and snobbery.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/fashion/07HORS.html?8hpib
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/fashion/07HORS.html?8hpib
the questionably small world
Nov. 6th, 2004 08:02 pmI'm sick, just a cold, but it's a particular insult after thinking just two days ago how healthy I've been lately. Ah well.
What is unfortunate is that I have a lot of physical things to do over the next several days that I could just cancel, but do not wish to (Regency dance class tomorrow and riding on Tuesday). I even went in to work today, although I'm not entirely sure why. But that's often the case lately, and I'll probably be working 45+ hours a week from now until I go to Australia because I can't really be auditioning for things now and the extra money is all good.
I keep checking my bank account to see if my NIDA tuition has been deducted from it yet, but realistically they might just be receiving my application now. Imagine my surprise when I found out an "overnight" letter to Australia takes three to six days. I was oddly charmed, by the world not being as small as I thought, and the postal folks being unsure as to whether that was a matter of three to six twenty-four hour periods, or if it in fact accounted for the international date line situation.
Aside from people I know merely via the Internet, all of my friends have always been relatively close at hand. On the other side of the country maybe, sure, but it's really not that far, and certainly not something I ever gave much thought too. But with various things afoot in the world and people moving (and let me just say, many people I know have emigrated to various countries for various reasons over the last ten years, so I don't particularly view my friends as just ranting in this regard -- this is something people I know do), it strikes me that in a few years we're going to be astoundingly spread out, probably over several continents.
There's a part of me, the part of me that can't write long fiction without it turning into an epistolary novel and who once had a friend with whom I exchanged letters that were practically architectural in their physical construction and relentlessly archane in their literary structure, that likes this idea very much. It's Romantic in that good ol' capital R sort of a way. But then so are historical novels, disaster flicks and war movies -- and well, you see where that's going.
It's actually true that I once had a number of really exceptional postal correspondances, and it just shocked me to realize that when I started university it was 1990, the Internet was far from ubiquitous and my friend Stephen and I exchanged regular letters not because we were pretentious wankers (we were, but what can you do?), but because we didn't both have email and couldn't afford the long distance. That's shocking to me, that I once had to write letters, and that I know people who have never known such a thing and that, that in turn is perfectly normal.
I think the Internet is absolutely great, and not just because it entertains me. But it has changed the nature not just of communication, but of longing, and that makes me sad.
By the way, track 10 on the Vanity Fair soundtrack is like this little two minute emotional burst of why I think Regency stuff is keen, the precise way in which I am graceful, and the constant way in which I seek out experiences that let me look up and around so as to be stunned. It's such a sound of arrival, it's just brilliant.
What is unfortunate is that I have a lot of physical things to do over the next several days that I could just cancel, but do not wish to (Regency dance class tomorrow and riding on Tuesday). I even went in to work today, although I'm not entirely sure why. But that's often the case lately, and I'll probably be working 45+ hours a week from now until I go to Australia because I can't really be auditioning for things now and the extra money is all good.
I keep checking my bank account to see if my NIDA tuition has been deducted from it yet, but realistically they might just be receiving my application now. Imagine my surprise when I found out an "overnight" letter to Australia takes three to six days. I was oddly charmed, by the world not being as small as I thought, and the postal folks being unsure as to whether that was a matter of three to six twenty-four hour periods, or if it in fact accounted for the international date line situation.
Aside from people I know merely via the Internet, all of my friends have always been relatively close at hand. On the other side of the country maybe, sure, but it's really not that far, and certainly not something I ever gave much thought too. But with various things afoot in the world and people moving (and let me just say, many people I know have emigrated to various countries for various reasons over the last ten years, so I don't particularly view my friends as just ranting in this regard -- this is something people I know do), it strikes me that in a few years we're going to be astoundingly spread out, probably over several continents.
There's a part of me, the part of me that can't write long fiction without it turning into an epistolary novel and who once had a friend with whom I exchanged letters that were practically architectural in their physical construction and relentlessly archane in their literary structure, that likes this idea very much. It's Romantic in that good ol' capital R sort of a way. But then so are historical novels, disaster flicks and war movies -- and well, you see where that's going.
It's actually true that I once had a number of really exceptional postal correspondances, and it just shocked me to realize that when I started university it was 1990, the Internet was far from ubiquitous and my friend Stephen and I exchanged regular letters not because we were pretentious wankers (we were, but what can you do?), but because we didn't both have email and couldn't afford the long distance. That's shocking to me, that I once had to write letters, and that I know people who have never known such a thing and that, that in turn is perfectly normal.
I think the Internet is absolutely great, and not just because it entertains me. But it has changed the nature not just of communication, but of longing, and that makes me sad.
By the way, track 10 on the Vanity Fair soundtrack is like this little two minute emotional burst of why I think Regency stuff is keen, the precise way in which I am graceful, and the constant way in which I seek out experiences that let me look up and around so as to be stunned. It's such a sound of arrival, it's just brilliant.