Part of me...
May. 21st, 2011 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer...is hoping this Rapture thing happens on schedule. Partly because it would make a fine excuse for stopping with the gardening, and partly because I love to see smug snark confounded, and there's been a lot of it lately. Having to live in a world of the damned, with floods and earthquakes and so on, almost seems a fair price to pay.
I said almost.
Jan's pain patches have run out, and the prescription I put in on Tuesday has yet to arrive at the chemist, and the surgery is of course closed at weekends. I'm waiting for a call back from the out of hours service to see if they can get me a replacement, which I'll have to go and fetch from Trowbridge and then get filled. The worry is that they've not been performing as well as they should, so if I can't get her one today and the one she has on runs out before Monday, it won't be pleasant for either of us.
Of course, the end of the world would solve that problem as well, since she would undoubtedly be taken up and I expect they have good drugs in heaven.
Meanwhile, Nyrond's Two Rules of Computer Tinkering:
1. When you embark on a long-drawn-out process like loading a large piece of software, and go away and leave the machine, it is axiomatic that when you come back the thing will have stalled at the first stage and be waiting smugly for a response from you.
2. And at the precise point when everything goes fish-shaped and you're trying to find the answer, that will be when you are interrupted by something important like the need to make a meal, or buy food, or dig the garden.
Have a good Saturday, everyone, and I'll see those of you who are still here tomorrow.
I said almost.
Jan's pain patches have run out, and the prescription I put in on Tuesday has yet to arrive at the chemist, and the surgery is of course closed at weekends. I'm waiting for a call back from the out of hours service to see if they can get me a replacement, which I'll have to go and fetch from Trowbridge and then get filled. The worry is that they've not been performing as well as they should, so if I can't get her one today and the one she has on runs out before Monday, it won't be pleasant for either of us.
Of course, the end of the world would solve that problem as well, since she would undoubtedly be taken up and I expect they have good drugs in heaven.
Meanwhile, Nyrond's Two Rules of Computer Tinkering:
1. When you embark on a long-drawn-out process like loading a large piece of software, and go away and leave the machine, it is axiomatic that when you come back the thing will have stalled at the first stage and be waiting smugly for a response from you.
2. And at the precise point when everything goes fish-shaped and you're trying to find the answer, that will be when you are interrupted by something important like the need to make a meal, or buy food, or dig the garden.
Have a good Saturday, everyone, and I'll see those of you who are still here tomorrow.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 02:57 pm (UTC)I am afraid I still don't understand how you would like obviously wrong ideas treated. I see three possibilities.
1) We can acknowledge that they're out there, and that they're obviously wrong. The down side of this is that obviously wrong and silly are basically the same thing, so I don't see any way to do this without at least implying that we think the ideas are silly even if we don't actually say the word. The up side is that it doesn't promote the obviously wrong idea, and it comments on social happenings that people notice and care about.
2) We can acknowledge that they're out there, and pretend to take them seriously. The downside of this is that 1) it's dishonest and 2) it might convince people who otherwise wouldn't have been taken in by the obviously wrong ideas. Since people so convinced have been quitting their jobs and squandering their savings (a situation perhaps more serious in the US, which has a ...decidedly inferior social safety net) this strikes me as a bad outcome. The up side, I guess, is that it can't appear to be impolite.
3) We can ignore the obviously wrong ideas, the way we would ignore out-of-bounds social behavior by someone who can't be expected to know better. The down side of this is that treating a grown man like an autistic child seems rude and condescending. The upside, of course, is that it is deniable. One might honestly not have noticed the obviously wrong idea and thus cannot be called out for being condescending.
Perhaps I have overlooked one or more possible responses, or perhaps I am mistaken about the balance of up and down sides here, but this is how I see it so far.
In the meantime, hopefully in a couple of days the whole thing will have died down again--these things have usually tapered off pretty fast after all the other non(uh, what's the plural of "Apocalypse"?), ah, non-events.
I extend sympathy about the gardening. I am trying to stun and weaken my grass by planting a tree or two each spring to shade it out, but I'm very much a once-in-a-while gardener myself. And good luck with the computer tinkering.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 04:09 pm (UTC)I think that may be where we differ. "Obviously wrong" is an objective judgment, and fair enough; "silly" is a subjective opinion, and one I don't share.
On the first point, it isn't that my life is on the whole bleak. For the most part it's fine. I have much to be thankful for, as I've said. But every so often a great jagged spar of reality bursts through and rips the good to shreds, and I'm running out of thread to knit it back together again. I've had to depend on so much help just to keep going, and sooner or later one has to recognise that one just is not meant to have survived this long. ("Meant" by whom is a question I'm not even going to try to answer, except to say that I mean it in the way bricks are not "meant" to hover in the air.)
Enjoy yourself tomorrow, though, by all means. I think I'll be taking another day or two off the net. It's surprising how easy it gets after the first two or three.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 06:34 pm (UTC)I'll get back to this some other time, because the other thing I really noticed was this:
every so often a great jagged spar of reality bursts through and rips the good to shreds
This statement implies that what is good in your life is not real, and what is real in your life rips your happiness to shreds. I'm sorry to disagree with you, but this looks pretty bleak to me. I wish your life was better than this.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 05:24 pm (UTC)My whole take on the rapture is that, if you have trouble understanding the point of version as explained in the new testament, then perhaps it's best to substitute the useful, much simpler, and rather poetic paraphrase once coined by Bayban the Butcher's mother:
"'Babe', she used to say...
(She called me 'Babe')...
'Babe', she would say,
'treat every hour as if it's your last.'"
(Italics mine.)
=:o}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 06:13 pm (UTC)As for the Rapture, I think we've all been left here. If it has removed the smug "I'm saved" lot then that can only improve things...
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 06:59 pm (UTC)Your rules of computer tinkering are spot on. I would add a corollary:
2a. When you return from the interruption, the machine will have shut itself off per the power saver feature.
As for the Rapture, which apparently has come and gone in the UK with no reported effect, I see smug snarkiness from all participants in the debate, so regardless of the outcome some confounding will have occurred. :-)