\t\t\t\tThe pedestrian overpass at 78th Street was under reconstruction, which
\nlooked more like recondestruction. Who knows if these public works
\nprojects are really needed, but if the bridge works when it is rebuilt
\nthen it can’t be bad.<\/p>\n
IN front of the Cement Workers place is a family of three. A fidgety boy
\nand responsible, patient parents. They walk the walk, waiting for traffic
\nto clear before crossing 35th Avenue. I now hear the father ask “How are
\nyou?” to who I do not know, and the boy says “Daddy” in a tone I can not
\ndiscern as question, answer, retort, complaint. The word, floated from the
\nboy’s mouth, into the somewhat damp night air.<\/p>\n
The day’s walk was enervating in its way. Productive in a blood flow way,
\nbut serene and buoyant in a nostalgic way. Way Way Way Way.<\/p>\n
I cought a seemingly exciting photo of a guy catching a fish from the East
\nRiver. the catch was sudden and mildly thrilling, but what made the
\nincident memorable was when the man’s ~12 year old daughter rushed up on
\nher razor scooter, watching the wrangling and yelling “THAT’S MY DADDY!”
\n— although at first I thought she said “THAT’S FOR DINNER!”, referring
\n(I thought) to the fish her daddy was reeling in.<\/p>\n
He was still wrestling with that thing 10 minutes later, as I walked on to
\nWards Island. Damn, I hope he caught it. His daughter seemed so excited,
\nand I would hate to think that he let her down by letting the big one get
\naway.<\/p>\n
I came dangerously close to spending about $1400 on Adobe software last
\nnight. I still have time to make that mistake, but not much. See, I have
\nthis notion that I am a web professional, and so I should entitle myself
\nto Flash and Illustrator and Photoshop Extended and other particles of
\nsoftware matter shipped at under 3 ounces. And what happened after I
\nbought the Sony a55 a couple of months ago was that I qualified
\nfor a $400 discount on the CS5 suites, which tempted me in strange and
\nconsumerist ways. I imagined becoming a Flash virtuoso, a Photoshop miner,
\nand an Illustrator master.<\/p>\n
But you know what? I am not in my 20s any more. New software is not
\nexciting or interesting to me. New software is mostly tiresome and
\nannoying, full of developer-centric bugs and fist-clenching frustrations
\nwhich cause me to grit my teeth and stamp my feet every single time I
\nconfront a goddam computer.<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s just Vista.<\/p>\n
I maintain a belief that my frustrations with software are punctuated
\nby roars of laughter from the room full of software developers who
\ncombined to produce this piece of shit. Gasps of incredulous giggles when
\nthe lowly end user can not find the fucking menu, or can not point thne
\nfucking mouse at the perfect fucking icon. “Doesn’t he even know there’s
\nan alt-F10-shift-control-P-delete shortcut for that?” the programmers ask
\nin exhausted, put-upon exasperation, laughing, laughing.<\/p>\n
I decided against the Adobe suite, even at the discount, because I see no
\nreason to bring more software into my ,life when software has caused me so
\nmuch aggravation. And if one wishes to inflict this mental and spiritual
\ndamage onto his self why not give free software a try first. I want to
\ntake another crack at Blender, which I think I trust, for at least as far
\nas I can throw it. I want to make 3d quivering blobs of text hanging like
\ncows from a meathook. Is that asking so much? Chains of text, dangling
\nfrom meat hooks, suspended like quakes in the air.<\/p>\n
Must learn, and I reject an inundation of Adobe products in favor of a
\nsingle, mature product which happens to be open source and which I for
\nsome reason trust.<\/p>\n
So what to do with that lingering $1400? Aha, probably send it to the
\ntaxman.<\/p>\n
It has been too beautiful out of doors to waste these days on work. When
\nwill I regroup? Circle back? Buzzword asunder? When will I get to work and
\nstop splaying these text matters into the cool air?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The pedestrian overpass at 78th Street was under reconstruction, which looked more like recondestruction. Who knows if these public works projects are really needed, but if the bridge works when it is rebuilt then it can’t be bad. IN front of the Cement Workers place is a family of three. A fidgety boy and responsible, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-ug","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}