What is going on here? No more full screen editor in MS Word, it seems.
OK, I found it. And it really is full screen, not like the last Word. Why must seasoned problem-solving skills be such a barrier to entry before using a new computer?
This looks like the Darkroom text editor, the well-intentioned but (to me) flawed attempt at simplifying the writing environment.
Darkroom is right about one thing: There is too much distraction in these things. Software constantly interrupts you, pokes you on the shoulder reminding you you are not alone. It’s a hassle, but not less so I suppose, than running out of typewriter ribbon or paper or other logistical problems of the Selectrix.
I have no nostalgia for the loud, hell-raising typewriters of yore — I have no nostalgia for much of anything — but wish I could find a computer typewriter that replicates the satisfying, tactile feeling of typing onto an old school typewriter.
I know of Steampunk but lack the disposable income for such nor would I trust my money on something like that without the privilege of being allowed to at least try it. Just once.
…
Reading Ashbery, from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, finding much to like. He strays into inscrutability — he commits to it — but I connect with what he means. Sometimes coherent sentences do not communicate what one is thinking or what one means. A dash of nonsense, usually unuttered, precedes those jewels of articulated thought that we imagine makes us something, makes us learnéd or erudite.
I liked Foreboding enough to copy it out. I thought it communicated the feelings that its title suggests, with or without specific dramatic elements or narrative objects. The incoherent scenario in which someone presents the author with an equation sounded like something that might linger in my head like a squall.
…
I arrived at a shell of a thought last week.
The whiff of mortality crossed my palette.
The reality of this earthly vessel’s failure tickled the back of my mind while thinking about baseball. Yes, baseball.
If we can accept and assume the use of steroids by a majority of players in the country’s only genuinely competitive baseball league we can abandon our perceived indignities and look to the future of these things — a future where comparable drugs are not just undetectable but safe and legal. Players will hit hundreds of home runs per season and — without ever tiring — play baseball from sunrise to midnight 365 days a year. Professional athletes will not just live longer. They will live forever. Their secrets of immortality will eventually trickle down to non-god commoners who choose immortality.
Not in this lifetime. Not for this body. Not for this person who finds that none of this life’s adventures or quotidian battles find comfort in knowing they will be extinguished when my earthly paces are finished.
…
Tuesday, June 02, 2009 4:09:02 PM
I walked around some. My eyes get troublesome. White, hazy cast, but not unlike the cast that has been there for years. There is no way to go back and compare but it seems only slightly more noticeable than before. And maybe I am just tired, malnourished, hung over, or all of the above.
I found a mass of old receipts and got manually/stubbornly nostalgic for the idea of moving to midtown. I lately start to question whether I even like Astoria in the first place, though I have no second thoughts about spending the last 11 years here.
Just seems I should have moved on already. This is a starter apartment, a nondescript location, a residential area that would never interest me were I considering moving today. The location was of value when I had a job in Manhattan, but of no value now.
…
I get the feeling D. thinks I am an asshole now. I knew this would come, if it actually has come.
I have never known a woman to whom I was anything more than the next asshole in line.
D. talks differently when she is with her sisters or family, and I am under no illusions about where I stand in that mix. She is too nice a girl, though, to believe for long that I am just another shithead.
Evidently she was scoring, on a scale of 1 to 5, my text messages while she was in Florida? That sounds like catty sister influences.
…
Here comes the rain. Outside it was hot humid and gross, only adding to my discomfort at getting more thrashing at my achilles thanks to these crazy MBT shoes.
…
I feel like I entered a continuum of aggravation commencing last Thursday, with an aggravation warm-up show on Wednesday. I ordered a new computer and expected it to arrive Wednesday. It did not, despite FedEx’s online tracking system indicating that the shipment was on schedule to arrive Wednesday. When 5:00pm on Wednesday passed FedEx conveniently changed its expected delivery day to Thursday but they never changed their claim that the delivery was “On Schedule”. So that was a wasted day.
The real waste of time came when the new computer arrived. I knew that at the very least a full day would be wasted setting this thing up and making it useable.
I misjudged how sharp my problem-solving skills would have to be before I could actually use this thing. I got constant system errors out of the box. Wasted 3 days.
