Comfortable Funk

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , Leave a reply

It has been one of those week­ends: rain most of the time, and when not rain­ing, windy, chilly and over­cast. Some­thing about these week­ends makes me slip into a com­fort­able melan­choly. I got out the deck of funk flash­cards and drilled myself: What am I doing? What have I done? Even worse, what haven’t I done? Where am I going? Am I enough? Am I happy? What is hap­pi­ness? How come every­one else is happy but me?

Sounds pathetic, but while it is, it isn’t meant to be. The words in my head sound matter-of-fact. Seems like a waste of time, and it is that, too. Instead, I should write more. The ideas come, but I don’t grab them and shove them in here, or at least onto paper. Instead, I allow myself to work on other things, to get dis­tracted by the tech­ni­cal aspect of main­tain­ing a blog and then never writ­ing in it, of col­lect­ing note­books, none of which get filled. I did some fun things, tho, and I was sur­rounded all week­end by peo­ple I love, and who love me. Smoo was in rare form Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, D an I worked on her room today, mom is chip­per and full of March mad­ness (or at least neu­roses), and Josh is a dear. They are what make the funk com­fort­able. And, to be hon­est, the funk itself was com­fort­able in a way, but in that way that I am not sup­posed to nur­ture. Ah, well.

It is rain­ing out­side, and the sound of it on the soft­ened, rot­ting ply­wood sounds like it used to when Jeff and I would sleep out back in our tent. It was water­proof enough… that is until you touched the side — just to make sure it wasn’t leak­ing, mind — and the pres­sure of your fin­gers offered just enough [unknown physics word] to cause a droplet to seep through and down your arm. The les­son there? Enjoy the rain. Get as close to it as you need to, but don’t dis­turb the thin sheet that keeps you from soaking.

The quietly social

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , 1 Reply

A lot of peo­ple think that coders and seri­ous com­puter geeks are anti-social ani­mals. While I would agree that the major­ity of them (us?) do not grav­i­tate toward night­clubs or huge par­ties, we are social beings, even when we work. This occurred to me lately, as I’ve been try­ing to wrap my head around a lot of new stuff at the cubi­cle. My cur­rent posi­tion is the first at which I have been mostly cohort-free, and the inabil­ity to ask for input, or another set of eye­balls, from some­one doing the same work that I do has become a bit daunt­ing. I am afraid that I am just as use­less to Den­nis and Stephanie. I will have to find some UGs to join in my spare time. *sigh*

There is a comfort in the worries of others

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged Leave a reply

I have been asked by many peo­ple whether becom­ing involved in the angst of oth­ers doesn’t exac­er­bate my depres­sion. I have, for most of my life, answered, “for the most part, no!” I never had, how­ever, a good rea­son to give to explain this per­sonal phe­nom­e­non, until recently.

I have dis­cov­ered that, if some­one you care about is wor­ried but you are not privy to the par­tic­u­lars of their wor­ries, you worry for them, and while doing so, fill in the gap in your knowl­edge with the worst pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios. On the other hand, if you are called in for advice on what causes them grief, you have been made part of the search for solu­tions, and there is no won­der­ing, no cat­a­stro­phiz­ing. You are wor­ry­ing with them, and work­ing with them to solve the prob­lem (even if work­ing with them means just being there), and there is a cama­raderie in that.

I still haven’t solved the mys­tery sur­round­ing my love of all things mor­bid, though. I will keep you in the know.

Those wacky Greeks

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged 1 Reply

You think you have just the thing to fin­ish off your WWF (Words With Friends, peo­ple, Words With Friends—sheesh!) oppo­nent, only to find out that, this time, the *lack* of an “S” is what pre­vents you from kick­ing some vocab­u­laric arse:

  • kudos: This one you knew was not the plural of “kudo”, the obscure fact a relic of some late-night Triv­ial Pur­suit game, half-drunken pub quiz or dear friend who taught your kid Attic Greek one summer…
  • alms — Really? I mean, I guess… I can’t imag­ine giv­ing an alm, but there is almoner and almonry…
  • gyros: This one was new to me, though. It seems that it has been made plural in Eng­lish and has a sin­gu­lar back-formation of gyro.

Really, tho, I am not com­plain­ing. The excep­tions are what make life beau­ti­ful, I think. It is just frus­trat­ing when an excep­tion pre­vents vic­tory. Ah, well. I have pub quiz fodder.

Two smart funny men

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , , Leave a reply

I had won­dered about a loss of col­lec­tive won­der­ing in the back issues. Pete Holmes says it bet­ter than I ever could, start­ing at around the four minute mark:

Hav­ing Google on your phone is like hav­ing a drunk know-it-all in your pocket. There’s no time for mys­tery or won­der. You’re just like, “how do they make glass?” “Blarghe­largle­bahhrahhh!!!” And you know. But the time between not know­ing and know­ing is so brief that know­ing feels exactly like not know­ing, so life is meaningless.

Equally, though more prac­tially, thought-provoking are the results of Louis C.K.‘s exper­i­ment in bypass­ing the cor­po­rate middle-man. Another foray into media self-publishing proves again that the con­sumer, given a chance, is hon­est and will pay for a prod­uct. The media con­glom­er­ates would have artists believe that we are all out to steal their art and their earn­ings, but more and more of them are under­stand­ing that the real thieves are the enter­tain­ment houses them­selves. Occupy entertainment?

Surrealist Cluedo

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , , Leave a reply

This week, Peter Segal set up per­fect exam­ple of the human desire to fill in holes. In this case, how­ever, the sleuthing drive was put to cre­ative use.

On the 13th of Decem­ber — the night of the Chicago Com­mu­nity Trust’s 96th anniver­sary event — Mr. Segal was serendip­i­tously in a posi­tion to take a pic­ture of Yo-Yo Ma on a bath­room floor with a wom­bat. Because he is a kind, gen­er­ous and some­what mis­chie­vous soul, he shared his cap­tioned photo with thou­sands of Twit­ter fol­low­ers.

Before long, Red­dit picked it up, and a mostly amus­ing train of spec­u­la­tion was cre­ated: Peo­ple didn’t know why Yo-Yo Ma was on a bath­room floor with a wom­bat, but they wanted to guess why more than they seemed to sim­ply want to know why.

I envy this cre­ative bent. I am able to muster a sim­i­lar sense of play­ful guess­ing for Yo-Yo-Wombat-type holes in my under­stand­ing: Sure, fill those with non­sense! It’s fun! But when the infor­ma­tion gaps are per­sonal, or have a bear­ing on my life or the lives of fam­ily mem­bers and friends, my instant reac­tion is to fill them with worst pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios. Why shouldn’t/can’t I instead fill them with mar­su­pial dae­mons and beau­ti­ful cello lan­guages that only wom­bats under­stand? Is it the fear that, should I be opti­mistic, the real facts will be a let-down? Well, per­haps they might be if I were too pollyanna in cre­at­ing my own take… It is never wise to fill a hole with rain­bow glit­ter and uni­corn rides. Instead, a sur­re­al­ist approach might be bet­ter suited to my depres­sive sen­si­bil­i­ties: Fill in the fright­en­ing unknown with rain­bow chicken-snails and uni­corn farts, and the idea will be amus­ing until the facts arrive, and will then be eas­ily traded for real­ity, since they were hardly pos­si­ble to begin with… except in Lau­rie Pink’s drawni­verse.

Res­o­lu­tion: Next time the boss has his door closed, I am going to assume he is prac­tic­ing park­our with the rest of the man­age­ment team. Yes. Much bet­ter. Now, does any­one want to join me in cre­at­ing a ver­sion of Clue where “It was Yo-Yo Ma in the Lava­tory with the Wom­bat” could be a pos­si­ble outcome?

We like to fill holes.

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged 1 Reply

I have started more note­books than I can remem­ber. I still find them mixed in with the books, ten or so pages filled and the rest blank, doomed to a life — my life­time — of serv­ing as tran­soms thru which, if you stand on a chair, an ani­mated gif’s worth of my life can be seen. At some point, I’ll have to give some thought to why I must start with a fresh note­book, and put even more intro­spec­tive effort toward why I aban­don them so quickly… Some­day I should tear out and file away only the filled pages from each, but there is a sanc­tity to bound writ­ing, even if it is my 14-year-old own.

Still, there is some­thing allur­ing about a blank book. Some­thing that makes me grab a pen and think — obses­sively — about what to write.  I cov­ered this predilec­tion here, in what shall now be referred to as the JustKristin Back Issues. I did, over the course of 10 years, do a lot bet­ter with that blog than I ever had with any note­book, per­haps because, while it had ini­tially been empty, it was never really not com­plete, hav­ing no pages to sit unused.

Despite a gen­eral desire to do so, over the past three or four years, I have all bu stopped writ­ing. This makes me sad. I’ve decided, how­ever, that this dry spell was not caused by a lack of inspi­ra­tion or abil­ity, but by the mis­placed belief that I needn’t bother. I have, there­fore, emp­tied this “note­book”, in the hope that its newly-pristine state would goad me into want­ing to fill it with words. Some­thing about the way my mind works will not let a hole sit empty, but forces me to fill it (tho often with the worst pos­si­ble stuff). Hope­fully what I put in here will not be too bad. Here we go.