(no subject)
Jul. 12th, 2007 05:55 amIs there a word for when you're using a power screwdriver or drill and the tip keeps slipping out as the resistance of what you're screwing into gets greater but if you lean into it it will still catch and turn and then slip out again and you hope that it screws all the way in before you strip it in case you ever need to remove it or it might end up just sticking out or you can cut it off and screw in another screw but only if there's room and there might not be and then you're fucked and have to figure out another, less-optimal solution?
That's how I've been feeling lately, especially right now.
It's just about 6am. I'm in Corona del Mar, Ca. I arrived yesterday early evening after an uneventful day of travel. My experiencial scores on the way out here were finally getting to iPod-listen to Puffy AmiYumi _Splurge_ that![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naylandblake giggled me towards and getting to read bunch of stories in my yearly reconnection with written SF, _The Year's Best Science Fiction_ edited by Gardner Dozois. Because these collections have all been edited by the same person there's a consistency in taste that draws me back to it, unlike the _Best American Short Stories_ collections that have ranged from glorious to execrable as the editors change each year (I was introduced to the series by my late friend Raul with the 1991 collection (yellow cover) and I still go back and re-read it periodically.)
I read the first one in 1990 (the 8th annual, I believe, I'd have to check my books at home) and have more or less kept up with them (I don't read anywhere as near as much as I used to but I've made it a goal to carve out more time for it.) They're not all great stories but there is an emphasis on good writing that can make up for plotlines that aren't always everything they should be. When it hits, though, it hits hard. In this collection there's a story called _Second Person, Present Tense_ that's just excellent - like the best SF it introduces a possible world and then populates it with real characters with real motivations and arcs and the end made me tear up.
The last story I read before I arrived had me standing at curbside at the OC airport hoping my mother would be stuck in traffic so that I could finish it (she wasn't and I had to wait until I went to bed to finish it.) It's David Gerrold's _In the Quake Zone_. There are flaws in it - it seems like 3 stories and the last, third part of it is almost Heinleinish in its lack of subtlety but the first and especially the second are great - and again, there were character-based concern and actually tears.
My fight attendent from Newark to Dallas was one of those texas women with a wig-like tease-up-then-fall-down large mushroom cap of dynel-blond hair that only texans have little enough shame to wear. And what's with the extremely tight clothes on men? It seemed that if you were a man with a good body and were in DFW you had Gloria-vanderbilt-girdle-tight jeans and a t-shirt that had been washed so many times that it was like thin silk stretched to the full extent. NOT SEXY.
One of the reasons for my being out here is to drive my mother up to see my aunt and she believes (and I think it's probably true) that driving from OC to Burbank on weekdays is a 2-3hr each way trip and so that we should plan on going on weekends. That blows my trip to SD for gay pride and sleazy bear dancing and leaves me stuck in the glossy soul-suck that is southern OC during the week. Going out here - Laguna Beach, basically - is a self-image test more than a social event, since men my age appear to be under the delusion that dying your hair an impossible color and wearing clothes made for teenagers is going to fool people into thinking you're still in your 20's. Needless to say I don't get much action either socially or sexually. Usually if I'm travelling I can find a bar and find people to chat with to get some gay, but that's just never been possible here.
So there's a muscle-head gym not far away and I can make periodic trips to the beach for bodysurfing, both of which I consider highlights in any context. I want to get some shots for a photo project and I'll drag my mother out as much as possible but her knees aren't good and she tires quickly.
It's now 7am and the sun is coming up over the hills behind the house and getting high enough that there are long house-shadows appearing in the street I can see when I look out the window behind me. It's going to be a beautiful day. I'm going to shower, make coffee, eat what she told me is the best nectarine I'll ever have had, and read the LA times.
That's how I've been feeling lately, especially right now.
It's just about 6am. I'm in Corona del Mar, Ca. I arrived yesterday early evening after an uneventful day of travel. My experiencial scores on the way out here were finally getting to iPod-listen to Puffy AmiYumi _Splurge_ that
naylandblake giggled me towards and getting to read bunch of stories in my yearly reconnection with written SF, _The Year's Best Science Fiction_ edited by Gardner Dozois. Because these collections have all been edited by the same person there's a consistency in taste that draws me back to it, unlike the _Best American Short Stories_ collections that have ranged from glorious to execrable as the editors change each year (I was introduced to the series by my late friend Raul with the 1991 collection (yellow cover) and I still go back and re-read it periodically.) I read the first one in 1990 (the 8th annual, I believe, I'd have to check my books at home) and have more or less kept up with them (I don't read anywhere as near as much as I used to but I've made it a goal to carve out more time for it.) They're not all great stories but there is an emphasis on good writing that can make up for plotlines that aren't always everything they should be. When it hits, though, it hits hard. In this collection there's a story called _Second Person, Present Tense_ that's just excellent - like the best SF it introduces a possible world and then populates it with real characters with real motivations and arcs and the end made me tear up.
The last story I read before I arrived had me standing at curbside at the OC airport hoping my mother would be stuck in traffic so that I could finish it (she wasn't and I had to wait until I went to bed to finish it.) It's David Gerrold's _In the Quake Zone_. There are flaws in it - it seems like 3 stories and the last, third part of it is almost Heinleinish in its lack of subtlety but the first and especially the second are great - and again, there were character-based concern and actually tears.
My fight attendent from Newark to Dallas was one of those texas women with a wig-like tease-up-then-fall-down large mushroom cap of dynel-blond hair that only texans have little enough shame to wear. And what's with the extremely tight clothes on men? It seemed that if you were a man with a good body and were in DFW you had Gloria-vanderbilt-girdle-tight jeans and a t-shirt that had been washed so many times that it was like thin silk stretched to the full extent. NOT SEXY.
One of the reasons for my being out here is to drive my mother up to see my aunt and she believes (and I think it's probably true) that driving from OC to Burbank on weekdays is a 2-3hr each way trip and so that we should plan on going on weekends. That blows my trip to SD for gay pride and sleazy bear dancing and leaves me stuck in the glossy soul-suck that is southern OC during the week. Going out here - Laguna Beach, basically - is a self-image test more than a social event, since men my age appear to be under the delusion that dying your hair an impossible color and wearing clothes made for teenagers is going to fool people into thinking you're still in your 20's. Needless to say I don't get much action either socially or sexually. Usually if I'm travelling I can find a bar and find people to chat with to get some gay, but that's just never been possible here.
So there's a muscle-head gym not far away and I can make periodic trips to the beach for bodysurfing, both of which I consider highlights in any context. I want to get some shots for a photo project and I'll drag my mother out as much as possible but her knees aren't good and she tires quickly.
It's now 7am and the sun is coming up over the hills behind the house and getting high enough that there are long house-shadows appearing in the street I can see when I look out the window behind me. It's going to be a beautiful day. I'm going to shower, make coffee, eat what she told me is the best nectarine I'll ever have had, and read the LA times.
