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BURNINGBIRD
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a node at the edge
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May 16, 2002
 Lock the Door, Close the Browser
Due to problems at provider, my DSL connection was choked down to sub-modem speeds. Painful. And basically unworkable with Movable Type -- all those buttons... Thankfully, back to working speed today. Yesterday, I was sitting in my favorite chair, listening to music and typing into my laptop when the door to my apartment opens. A man enters, sees me and stops, half in, half out. He stares at me, I stare at him, waiting for him to say something along the lines of "Oh, excuse me! Wrong door!" When he continues to stare and look around the apartment in confusion, I ask, "Can I help you?", being sure to put a little 'you've walked into my home, bud, and what if I had been nude' tone into my voice. He starts laughing and says, "I've come to the wrong floor! I live on the second floor and must have got off on the wrong floor. I live in 222!" Sounds reasonable. Easy mistake. Just shut the door on your way out. "I was so surprised. I couldn't figure out who you were." Well, cool. Please leave now. "How funny! You must have really been surprised, too." WHAT THE HELL DO I NEED TO DO TO GET YOU TO GO! I got up and walked towards the door and the guy still isn't leaving. Friendly, not harmful at all -- just chattering away. Being a polite soul, I respond to his chatter. Yes, funny coincidence. Yes, I do sometimes forget to lock my door when I bring groceries in. And, yes, weather has been nice...now move your butt outside my door! After I herded him out, and just as I'm closing the door he calls back, "Well, nice meeting you!" I locked the door and started to walk away. Stopped. Turned back and threw the dead bolt. We are a society that is, above all, polite. We have raised courtesy to an art form, honing it into fine-edged usefulnes. Our words become knives as we fight a duel called "conversation" -- victor and victim equally bloodied. We circle and stab, and then commiserate with the pain, apologize for the sting. We pommel each other with argument and viewpoint, all the while debating the finer points of etiquette. We hammer at each other with opinion; we blast most eloquently, and always with the highest regard, the deepest sincerity. We hold mirrors up to show others their flaws, only to find that the silver has flaked off, the glass is transparent. You know what I like about weblogging? If you read something you don't like, or something that irritates you, or a piece of self-righteous garbage, you can close the browser and it's gone. You don't have to be polite. You don't have to read, react, respond. Just close the browser. Posted by Bb at May 16, 2002 06:41 AM Comments
You can close the browser and wince at what you've read even after it's gone, or you can write a response and, trusting to the whims of the web-reading populace and the possibilities we've discussed before to 'encourage' ideas to race each other up the Google charts, hope that readers of one idea will also soon happen on the other. And the picture will become fuller, ideally, for everyone involved. But then, as you suggest, sometimes it's just easier to let 'suspiciously murky water' lap at your ankles and take a shower rather than fight with unreliable plumbing. Posted by: steve himmer on May 16, 2002 07:06 AMSteve, sometimes you can't win no matter what. Trying to find common ground is just so much spitting into the wind. Posted by: Bb aka Shelley aka Weblog Bosswoman on May 16, 2002 07:21 AMYou're right, Shelley, but somedays I feel like spitting even if it comes back in may face. It's like the frustrated general, unable to take advantage in battle, (from my Scots grandmother it was always Robert the Bruce, but I've also heard it took place in Troy)who watched a spider trying to spin a difficult web time after time until it succeeded. The general then rallied his troops and they won. Except that it probably cost a lot of lower-ranking soldiers their lives. Posted by: steve himmer on May 16, 2002 08:12 AMWhat the heck are you guys metaphoring about? Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on May 16, 2002 08:29 AMWhat's a metaphor? Posted by: steve himmer on May 16, 2002 08:40 AMIt's phor sounding clever while talking about spiders and plumbing. Posted by: steve himmer on May 16, 2002 08:41 AM"Roll me o-o-ver, in the ph-o-o-r! Roll me over lay me down and meta me againnnnnn!" Posted by: Bb aka Shelley aka Weblog Bosswoman on May 16, 2002 08:51 AMI never metablog I didn't like. Posted by: steve himmer on May 16, 2002 08:56 AMTrue, and that's about all that metas, if you can take the punishment. Posted by: Allan on May 16, 2002 02:16 PMPost a comment
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