Perhaps no more now than it ever was! Ha ha!
Ha.
Okay, well…it’s such a chore to come up with clever new blog titles…and yes, I know I thought I’d come up with “It’s Geek to Me” before anyone else but I’m not confident of that…so what’s the harm in knowing where I’ve been, as long as it doesn’t keep me from getting where I’m going?
Ha ha, Inner Critic, put that in your title and smoke it!
Hey, I’m not saying that.
What, in this economy?
Right.
I just think the interview for the geek job today went well. It’s legit, you know, and it’s got pleasant buzzwords attached, like “casual work atmosphere” and “low turnover” and “competitive salary” so I’m hopeful. But of course I’m not about to cancel the other interviews.
Hey, I’m not saying that.
Another fine day in – well, it’s not paradise, but it’ll do.
So you’re not a lawyer, most likely, but I must write as though you were.
Why? Because as everyone knows, what you post online can have very significant ramifications down the road.
Well, almost everyone.
Hm … what if I were still working for my previous employer, feeling the seasick way I felt, and still had to be the responsible new daddy of a baby girl too? As well 
as the compassionate dad of a “vigorous” nine-year-old? Can’t imagine much beyond the massive emotional pain, not all of it mine…oh, perhaps a few specifics about the disintegration of my marriage – arguments & complaints from and about children not having their father available to them, unable to stay awake and alert and unembittered…
Mind, if I’d stuck it out for whatever dubious reason, I’d now be wondering about my retirement money (which I may certainly have received in my last check, but it’s hard to tell because they were a bit sketchy on the particulars then, and I was able to fight off any desire to prolong the relationship) and I’d likely be half a mile down the road towards some A+ certification or other. I’d be divorced or heading for one, with attendant legal complications and likely estrangement from my children, most likely, but at least I could be getting my geek freak on.
And would that be facile consolation for the destruction of an existence for which I literally had to cheat death? Not so much, no.
Overheard two seventh graders comparing war stories around the theme of “the time I did my first energy drink.” Naturally, I was both repelled and fascinated as recreational drug use was treated with wistful-if-blase sophistication by twelve-year-olds. I would like to say I was never so jaded at such a tender age, but only because I’m pushing 40 (well, no, not pushing – more like I’ve got my shoulder smack against it while I prepare to flip it over like a street rioter with a Volkswagen)
…and cranberries/mashed potatoes/pumpkin pie etc. followed by a not-so-quick traipse toward a Christmas goose and perhaps some eggnog. Detecting a theme here? It’s true – I’ve been living vicariously through my stomach for at least the last year or so, without really admitting it. Good food is my refuge, mediocre food is my panacea, really-not-very-tasty-at-all food is better than nothing, and nothing is what I occasionally drive off to work with after my morning coffee and crisis of confidence. Then I get to school, unlock my classroom and all is blotted out until 3:02.
As I have time I’m reviewing my private posts to determine how (and whether) to make them publicly available. This should hopefully answer the question of “where’s the blogging on that blog?”
Advice from an Almost-Middle-Aged Reader to Some Younger Adults
Watership Down
What if the most timid creatures in the world weren’t really all that timid? What if they took daring risks, told extravagant tales of heroism, and occasionally solved their disputes through vicious warfare?
Watership Down doesn’t have much to do with ships going down (although the plot can’t do without one scene involving a small boat), but after this novel you’ll never look at rabbits the same way. Richard Adams’ writing is subtle at first, and he sometimes shows a bizarre enthusiasm for things botanical, but after the first three pages Watership Down has become a real place, and its protagonists have turned from rodents into real people. What a fun, escapist read!
The Hitch-Hiker’s Trilogy
Before he wrote the radio script for this satirical corpus of interstellar lunacy, Douglas Adams contributed a skit to legendary British television/film comedy team Monty Python. After the radio script had caused multiple near-death experiences (some listeners, laughing at the show while they ate, narrowly avoided asphyxiation due to choking) Adams was persuaded by a group of persons with a small suitcase full of cash to turn his script into a novel. The second book in the trilogy, The
Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was elicited from Adams using a somewhat larger suitcase. By the third novel, Life, the Universe, and Everything, they had dispensed with the suitcases and were just bringing over the money in huge bales. Adams’ clever writing is worth every pound of pounds. Although Life, the Universe, and Everything is somewhat less humorous than the preceding two works, it makes up for that by being impossibly weirder. Advice for enjoying it: get on the net and research the sport of cricket.
By the way, the Hitch-Hiker’s trilogy has five novels in it (what, you were expecting different?) – after Life… came So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, which picks up where Hitch-Hiker’s began. Yes, began. And last but doubtfully least is Mostly Harmless, which is as poly-apocalyptic as the first Hitch-Hiker’s novel most definitely is not – well, okay, it is. A bit. But while Earth is vaporized, neither book’s plot suffers the slightest injury – rather the contrary. Read this series before you turn 21, and savor the experience for life.
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
You were wondering where that silly “Zen & the Art of” cliche originated? Yep, you guessed it. But it wasn’t notably silly when Robert Pirsig invented the phrase, and he very seriously goes on to forcefully impose responsibility for the world’s being as screwed up as it is on everyone’s favorite (or at least second favorite) ancient Greek philosopher. Which one? Well, if you haven’t read the book, it’s not giving away much of the mystery to note that Pirsig initially throws his lot in with Plato, and it spoils nothing to observe that in the
introduction he admits to not being particularly helpful about either zen or motorcycle maintenance. That turns out to be no major concern, but as the book follows his cross-country motorcycle trip with his son and flashes back with increasing tension on the circumstances leading up to his psychotic break, it becomes clear that Pirsig could really use a greater facility with the one than the other. I’m still not sure if Plato was a zen master, but I’m pretty sure Aristotle wasn’t.
When I read this in college, I just happened to be on essentially the same wavelength as the author – a shade less bonkers, to be sure, but in full agreement with his major points nonetheless. I mean, how dare Aristotle try to write as if he knew everything worth knowing? If you didn’t agree with him on a basic axiom or two, he considered you to have the brains of a plant. Who the hell was this arrogant bastard, anyway?
Turns out he struck Plato as one mighty clever fellow. But he did feel as though he had some ontological turf to defend, as most of us do…so he wrote as if he knew what he was talking about and believed what he was saying. How many of us have done similarly? True, Aristotle thought more deeply than most, and did it in ancient Greek as well, which scores points for style. But I doubt now that he had any inkling what his 600 pound gorilla of an analytical approach would help give rise to – and to be completely fair, if he hadn’t been there to start everyone off wrecking the world, someone else would have stepped into the breach. It’s practically, uh, axiomatic.
And belated kudos to Eric Lyons for complaining so aptly when that professor at St. John’s “put on his big Aristotelian boots and stomped all over” him. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the teacher from the ruler, but rulers throughout the universe radiate their invisible gratitude whenever someone does.
Teacher, Teach Thyself 