This May evening is seeming more and more like March every moment since the sun went down. I shall have to burn a few cats to keep warm. Please excuse me.
Music: Cl�rambault � cantates, suite, simphonie on Naxos. Very, very good budget French baroque. Naxos's engineers seem to like very no-nonsense mic placement and levels and shit. I couldn't tell you more about it than my amateur's appreciation that it sounds recorded, but in a good way. It's very flattering for chamber music, since what you hear has a very clear, very gentle single light source, like in a Vermeer, I suppose, without the distortion in tones that might imply. Cl�rambault's suites for clavecin have been on my shopping list for months, but this recording has bumped them up to number two or three.
I am [sound of grim determination kicking in] going to go to grad school in 2004 if it kills me. This job is not where I want to squander my talents. Oh, there I go again, pretending that giving myself and my life to anything short of unrelenting ascetic contemplation of one teensy aspect of human existence is selling myself short intellectually. Well? Is it any wonder?
I did a really good PowerPoint presentation last week. As usual, I was too modest about my achievement. This was not difficult: I didn't spend much time on it, and I used what I consider a number of rather cheap tricks. With unlimited time, I would do the whole thing over properly, but I was in the thumbscrews over it. It still buggers my mind that my ability to toss off a couple dozen slides, make them look attractive, and still spell everything correctly is a rare and beautiful thing in the business world. And this is the sector where the money circulates! On the other critical hand, it is significant that I'm happy enough with the project to write about it, even in a mostly degrading light. It is also significant that it is a Finished Project, surrounded by the vast and trunkless rest of my �uvre.
I am a sucker for the GAY CINEMA. Tonight I watched most of All Over the Guy (IMDb User "Dick Chester" calls it "The Worst Gay Movie Of All Time": either it's her time of the month or bitch doesn't get out much). Christina Ricci! Lisa Kudrow! A gay main character with glasses and a geeky streak! I was in love. I don't get out much, either.
The pleasant political fiction I like to believe about my unhealthy attraction to any dippy homo movie goes something along the lines "Until there are no longer reliable heterosexist assumptions about the nature of romance in film, I will support dippy gay romantic comedies, yea, even to the point of turning a blind eye to their weaknesses." My real justification, in my . . . heart of hearts, goes something along the lines of "Look at those two guys make out! Listen to them being bitchy! Ha ha ha!". There's also the Muriel's Wedding effect of remedial education in coupling: I may not have a boyfriend, but this time spent eating my Annie's pasta alone in front of the telly will not have gone to waste! I shall have been learning about Human Relationships!" Time well spent, Riatsala.
It's time to redecorate. What do you possums think of a nautical theme? Hammocks! Rope! Brass Fixtures! Ahoy, matey!