after a severely unproductive day i find retreat at the beer hall, one of the last places in this area where i don’t know anybody and where i can mind my own business. i am somewhat more diligent (studious, even) about avoiding human contact here than i have been in other places, but inevitably i see myself getting involved with people here. i am just too nice a guy, you know? too darn interesting!
i had a crazy flash of genius today: i should move to Rockaway. hooyah… it’s an artsy area, but what is there to do at night? probably not a lot.
i had to call Sharp today to complain about the remote control and its habit of interfering with the new cable box i got yesterday. i had to go to Queens Center Mall to get a 3D-capable cable box. without that you can’t see 3D programming (which is no great loss but hey, i paid for it and 2 sets of the stylish 3D glasses, so i kinda wanna see it). with the new cable box set up and running i couldn’t get 3D to work at all because the remote from Sharp was sending weird signals to the set top box, and it was also causing other interference with the signal. long story short it was a pain in the ass… boo hoo
…..
i tried to re-write an old screed today but i got nowhere. i woke up from a dream which got me to thinking about a philosophical dilemma that i never quite figured out. it involves the fictitious scenario of a someone dining at an ordinary restaurant and receiving the worst service ever. everything goes wrong: food is cold, the waiter is an asshole, the charges are outrageous, and there is mutual loathing all around, but the brunt of the vitriol comes from the waiter, with the customer as a chagrinned, unwitting pawn sacrificed to the people-hating anger of the service industry.
so what does the customer do? he tips $1,000 on a $15 check. this is his expression of disdain, tossing bills like candy at an asshole waiter who hates all people.
to me the $1,000 tip is an expression of disdain, though the waiter might think otherwise, as might anyone else in his position.
as i thought about it today i think the $1,000 figure is irrelevant, but could probably be quite a bit less to make the fictitious situation seem more realistic. maybe he leaves $100 on a $10 check.
either way, the customer also leaves an itemized list of where the asshole waiter earned his keep: “Did not say hello: $10. Food was cold: $15. Waiter had body odor and bad breath: $35” This list of indiscretions goes on and on until the total is $100, or $1,000, but the point of the effort is that the slighted customer dumps cash on the asshole waiter as an expression of his disdain, done in such a way as to counterbalance the excitement the waiter might feel at this windfall of ill-gotten funds.
because to me the acquisition of undeserved monies is deplorable, whatever the circumstances.
(Christ, my mother would have loved this discussion. She would have said that all people with money deserve to have those funds summarily plucked away and distributed evenly to those without.And after she said that, well, then we’d get to talking…)
…..
buying a new computer. that’s always fun. going HP again, even if the last desktop from them is the worst computer i ever owned. i’ve discovered that the RAID is fundamentally unreliable. it is not to be relied on. disks fail and you are on your own when it comes to knowing about it. fuck the RAID. FUCK the ReadyNAS/ReadyNASTY RAID. i turned it off and plan to put it into storage next week.
