3:06 p.m. - 2006-06-09
THWARTED!!
Aaaaaaaaargh.
I just wrote the most dynamite entry about visiting Jamie and Missy but unfortunately not Milo Jones in Massachusetts, but then, see, the dumb computer went OFFLINE without dumb me knowing it and I lost the whole entry.
Grrrrrr.
Stupid internet.
It was a good entry. Very evocative. Very "in the moment". It would have piqued emotions you didn't even know you had. I used the word "Brechtian" not once, but TWICE.
Or maybe it wasn't that good of an entry. Anyway, here were the highlights:
*Business commuters on cell phones: Those unnatural conversations they have, always the same, consisting of phone greeting, then lots of business jargon, usually involving numbers and how so-and-so is supposed to get the numbers to some guy by whenever, something about the Denver office, unfunny joke, artificial laughter, and to wind down, a promise of future social interaction. Where do they learn to talk like that? Business schools, that's where. And that's why every business school must be burned to the ground.
*Jamie's fiance Missy: Seems very nice! And a good match for our James. Also, she does improv and her parents were born in Portugal. (I THINK this is right. Could be her grandparents.)
*The Salem pirate museum: ARRRRRRRR!
*Jamie and Missy have never heard a Shaggs song!! And yet they would love the Shaggs!
*The New Bedford/Fall River rivalry: Appears to be historically based on New Bedford's whaling economy versus Fall River's textile industry:
"Lousy bunch of Ishmails, polluting the coastline with their stench of rotten bait and cheap rum", sneers the Fall Riverian.
"Arrrrr," counters the New Bedfordite, "These textile-makers be a lubberly lot, with their unfair labor practices and trade relationship with the plantation owners that ensures that slavery will continue to define the southern economy, creating a rift in the north between religious and secular abolitionists on the one hand, and economic pragmatists, who, while perhaps ostensibly anti-slavery on human-rights grounds, don't wish to see the practice ended any time soon, lest their supply of cotton dry up. I'd keelhaul the lot of them, given the chance, arrrr."
Kia and I, wisely, chose to remain neutral.
*Jamie was the first person I ever heard use the word "Brechtian", I believe in 1991. Also, his house has not one but two harpsichords.
*It was good seeing Jamie for the first time in, what, five years.
That's the meat of it. Feel free to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
Stupid computer.
