My place in the new paradigm.

Just to get things straight.

I have bad eyesight, so I'm allowed to be not joining the army right now.

So am I still allowed to look for jobs in Seattle, or vacationing in Europe next year?

I met a woman on the bus today, and wouldn't you know it, she was joining up soon. She was on a trip to the mall to buy USA T-shirts for her whole family.

Filk

I don't think I fit in with the local sci-fi group. And to tell the truth, maybe I'm glad.

I met there an old-timer geek. You know the kind; big white beard, but none of the accompanying wisdom and maturity. He was with a woman who could have been anywhere between 30 and 50 years old; a plain woman who didn't speak much. I don't even know if they were "together" together. They seemed to fight fiercely in the car as they were driving my home, but with social skills as stunted as theirs, I don't think I could read anything into that. She would pull into the left-turn land and he'd bark out "NO!" as if he were scolding a dog.

Also, they played a filk CD in that car. Filk is, well... imagine if a bunch of geeks doing cover songs in the style of Weird Al Yankovic, but not as funny and about Mystery Science Theater 3000. And when I got home, I watched "Exposure" on the sci-fi channel, which showed some bad amateur film about what it's like to be a redshirt ensign on Star Trek. I probably would have thought all this was really awesome when I was 13. But, no.

It's a mixed blessing, I suppose. Unlike most intelligent loners, I wasn't involved in the "community" when I was growing up; didn't have any D&D-playing friends to get me properly indoctrinated, so I wasn't raised in a culture where singing "Phantoms of Filk" to the tune of "Sultans of Swing" might be at all rewarding. So I have no reason to turn my adult life into an extended childhood.

(no subject)

Three hours of wonderful swing dancing can be undone by a 10-minute cab ride with 4 minutes of talk radio and a driver who responds to a request to switch to the classic rock station with a big swearing rant about how he's fuckin' sick of the whole fuckin' thing, and how what we need to be scared of is a vial THIS BIG.

I can't believe I still tipped that fucker a dollar, but he did change the station.