O O Ø O O O O
Unshackled
I, I think I understand
What all this fighting is for
And baby, I just want you to understand
That I'm not angry anymore
No, I'm not angry anymore
– Ani Difranco
It's finally Happened.
I knew there was a risk at the time. It's just not possible to trade in the shackles of employment for Academia without losing a bit of the vitriol in the process, but I never really envisioned the day when I would be sitting here on a Tuesday, holding the pode, without anything to rant about.
Now it's finally happened.
The truly sad thing is, it's not for lack of fodder. No, the world is still full of stupid people. My problems are deeper than that. It's anger I'm lacking. I'm missing the kind of seething rage that drove us to invent this Tuesday institution in the first place.
I tried, I really did. I dug deep, but do you think I could come with the rage?
Nope. Not even after one of our esteemed Pint Day Saints put in a full day's effort trying to coax CSS and its insipid box model into giving us a slightly fresher new look. I mean, it's not our fault the spec was written by utter lunatics who obviously never spent anytime trying to actually implement real-world layouts. Nor is it our fault their inheritance model can only be described as recklessly inane. Nope. I just wrote off the whole experience as form following function; or, in this case, CSS following content.
So I looked for rage elsewhere.
For instance: you'd think that after half a year of listening to preachy couch-potatoes tell me how bad running is for my knees, that I'd have some kind of witty retort to deliver. Like the obvious “Just because you tried to run a marathon on a pair of worn-out cross-trainers after spending six years on the couch watching Seinfeld reruns, doesn't mean it's bad for you, moron.” No. Instead I'm content to shake just my head and keep running, soothed by the gentle sound of couch potato arteries hardening.
Still no rage. I thought through the usual offenders: copyright vs. licensing; the guy with the evil gene; kill all the lawyers; bartleby stealing from the public domain; software engineering, or lack thereof; four half-hour power outages while writing this rant; people who only call me for free computer help; federal politics; the parking lot at Wal-Mart.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing got the bile flowing.
Shit. I guess that means Pint Day is working.
Charles, you got it wrong. Tuesday is the best day of the week. You just need to relax, have a pint, and let it all out. Sooner or later, the good times catch up. Then you can sit back, enjoy your beer, and watch all the other silly buggers bitch about their day.
Especially the ones wearing the shackles.
Kjell Wooding
Tuesday, August 20,
2002
PD DLXI