July 4, 2002, 11:32 a.m.

Liquid assets

back & forth

Suauissimi lectores:

My silence in the last few days should not seem odd to you. Indeed, I hinted obliquely at my immanent employment in my last dispatch, and "Whoop!" as the poet says, "there it is." I am geeking for cash, mirabile dictu in this post-bubble world. More specifically, I'm customer supporting for a software company, which, though it places me nowhere near top dog in the geek pack, does involve at least enough technical savoir-faire that I can congratulate myself on the issue. I also, dangerously, have 'net access from work for the first time in my life. Therefore, for a multitude of reasons, I am declaring a moratorium on all discussion of my workplace and co-workers almost before my job starts. Which is a pity, since they're insane in such delectable ways.

Delectability: Tapas at D*l*, at an all-swattie table for ten; impressive, not to say chaotic. I had a very, very pleasant semisparkling Txakol�. The canel�n de vegetales was particularly splendid: filled with pickled and fresh vegetables and topped with carrot sauce. * * * $$$

It's all about me, part 742: I am only ever happy or comfortable when, for what appears at first to be unrelated reasons, every other person I know is dissatisfied. Now, this is not as simple as it sounds: it's not their torment off on which I get. Nay, it works more like astrological contrarianism: my star rises infrequently and only when all other stars flee the sky. When everybody else is plunged into periods of unproductivity, I am ready for action; when I am finally satisfied with an order is when everybody else wants to change it. I noticed this when, on day three of my new, wonderful job, CO toasts, with enthusiastic clinkage, "to leaving your job!"

I wonder how long I can operate at maximum efficiency. Historical evidence suggests I can put about three months into some thing or other before it loses me outright. Along the way, I usually want to lose myself in sin when I'm not at work -- a few bottles of wine a night, rich food, luxury cigarettes, sexual indiscretions, . . . hell, even my choice of shampoo o'erleaps my tax bracket and elicits shouts of "sumptuary laws!" from my inner Savonarola. That said, it's exhilarating -- yes, exhilarating! -- to be a commuter again, to have a bus-pass and an hour-long lunch and a paycheck again. Will I overspend, in my first headlong rush into consumerism for a full year? While it is true that recent developments in my "personal cashflow situation" will allow, indeed, require a new wardrobe, I have the self-control of an incontinent ferret.

Seriously, though, I do need to buy summer clothing, given the global warming situation. I used to regard wearing shorts and short sleeves as an ugly capitulation to the summer heat; to dress down admitted of summer's presence when it is in fact the slattern cousin whom we should all shun. My forefathers wore damask waistcoats and beaver hats through the summer, my foremothers simply marinaded themselves in layers, on top of restricting their breathing with stays -- and they still managed to bring Jowett's Plato to the fryingest tropics of the globe. Perspiration is just as easy to control as any other aspect of civilized human behavior, given the right supervision, a wink from Western scientific method, and an effective police force. Why then the sudden imperative to parade in such unseemly near-skivvies? Have we become soft? Or savage? Or, indeed, has the heat become intolerabe, since one needs to tolerate so much more as a baseline?

Music: Josquin's L'Homme arm� masses.