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That is all. I don't have too many crushes, but them's I got is fierce.
21/2/08
Every now and then I get a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff around me. I go down the aisles at Costco looking for toilet paper (nothing makes me happy in quite the way that knowing I won't have to worry about toilet paper for two months does) and see the sheer volume of printer ink cartridges and four-pound boxes of strawberries and gallon cans of olive oil, frozen stuffed chicken breasts and flats of blueberries, 12 packs of Mocha Frappuccinos and jumbo boxes of Tide, and it just overwhelms me. Especially when I multiply all that stuff by Costco's nearly four hundred outlets.
But that's just too easy. Sometimes its the mushrooms and green peppers at my local Safeway that trip my switch. They look so fresh and beautiful, dozens upon dozens of them (and probably more in the back storage area), and all that multiplied by howevermanyzillion Safeways there are in the country, and then I realize that some of them won't be sold, will be given--one hopes--to food programs or shelters, and the peppers will be replaced by more peppers later.
It's a lot of stuff. Sometimes all that plenty is kind of oppressive. I feel guilty that, by feeding my family (and liking green peppers and mushrooms and not to having to think about toilet paper more often than I must) I am contributing to this vast array of stuffness.
Which takes us to this evening, when I was hopping, as one does, around the Internet. You know how it goes. You check out your friends LJs and note a fascinating post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jonquil about Edward Despard, the last man to be sentenced to death by drawing and quartering in England. So that takes you to Wikipedia. Then you leap over to Amazon to check out the book on Despard that is quoted, and somehow find yourself leaping into something else, which reminds you that you wanted to check something on Making Light, where you get swept up into three or four fascinating sidelights and...
My god, there's a lot of words out there. I mean, you click on something and it takes you somewhere else where they're offering (with a few punctuation errors) to sign you up for something, so you back up a few steps and click on something else that has the complete works of someone or other, and you learn, by Googling, that there are actually three or four different websites with that author's complete works (apparently keystroked by different parties, because they feature different typos), and that's still more words. Somewhere someone is typing all this stuff--right now, one of the typers is me.
It's been this way for years, of course: there are hundreds of books published every year (or thousands) and they're out there where people can find them, and they were all typeset by someone. Thousands of magazines--with more words--coming out every week/month/year. Words without end! It never occurred to me to be overwhelmed by them. The thing about the 'net is that it's all here. There's very little that you can't access, very little of those unbelievable number of keystrokes that isn't available to you right now, sometimes whether you want it or not. More than that hypothetical room full of monkeys typing forever could account for.
I love it. I mean, I really do. I'm totally hooked on my ability to find out the temperature in Bruges or the actress who played Scully's mother on The X-Files (it was Sheila Larkin). I love when one friend's blog leads me to smart, interesting words written by someone I've never met or read before. I love the funny and the true and the bits of research I can get done without getting out of my pajamas. It's wonderful.
But holy shit, it's a lot of words.
But that's just too easy. Sometimes its the mushrooms and green peppers at my local Safeway that trip my switch. They look so fresh and beautiful, dozens upon dozens of them (and probably more in the back storage area), and all that multiplied by howevermanyzillion Safeways there are in the country, and then I realize that some of them won't be sold, will be given--one hopes--to food programs or shelters, and the peppers will be replaced by more peppers later.
It's a lot of stuff. Sometimes all that plenty is kind of oppressive. I feel guilty that, by feeding my family (and liking green peppers and mushrooms and not to having to think about toilet paper more often than I must) I am contributing to this vast array of stuffness.
Which takes us to this evening, when I was hopping, as one does, around the Internet. You know how it goes. You check out your friends LJs and note a fascinating post by
jonquil about Edward Despard, the last man to be sentenced to death by drawing and quartering in England. So that takes you to Wikipedia. Then you leap over to Amazon to check out the book on Despard that is quoted, and somehow find yourself leaping into something else, which reminds you that you wanted to check something on Making Light, where you get swept up into three or four fascinating sidelights and...My god, there's a lot of words out there. I mean, you click on something and it takes you somewhere else where they're offering (with a few punctuation errors) to sign you up for something, so you back up a few steps and click on something else that has the complete works of someone or other, and you learn, by Googling, that there are actually three or four different websites with that author's complete works (apparently keystroked by different parties, because they feature different typos), and that's still more words. Somewhere someone is typing all this stuff--right now, one of the typers is me.
It's been this way for years, of course: there are hundreds of books published every year (or thousands) and they're out there where people can find them, and they were all typeset by someone. Thousands of magazines--with more words--coming out every week/month/year. Words without end! It never occurred to me to be overwhelmed by them. The thing about the 'net is that it's all here. There's very little that you can't access, very little of those unbelievable number of keystrokes that isn't available to you right now, sometimes whether you want it or not. More than that hypothetical room full of monkeys typing forever could account for.
I love it. I mean, I really do. I'm totally hooked on my ability to find out the temperature in Bruges or the actress who played Scully's mother on The X-Files (it was Sheila Larkin). I love when one friend's blog leads me to smart, interesting words written by someone I've never met or read before. I love the funny and the true and the bits of research I can get done without getting out of my pajamas. It's wonderful.
But holy shit, it's a lot of words.