Tuesday Hatred: Tomlinsoniad

Actually, I’m kind of at a loss. My only recent complaints are the same ones I’ve long had, and familiarity has, in this case, bred not contempt but maundering near-indifference. My hatred has long since been ground up fine and is no more than the daily salt and pepper of my life (one might say without giving credit to its source). Can I even work up hatred regarding my inability to be either hot or cold? No, not really.

Tuesday Hatred: Pious Litter

Today, Monday, I napped lightly for about 90 minutes following lunch. I hate that. I would like to be able to maintain consciousness for, at a minimum, six hours at a go. I think that would be nice. Even now (only a few hours after I emerged from what is likely my natural state, to wit, slumber) I can feel myself beginning to act in a dormitively virtuous manner. (One might even say, with a soupçon of irony (the soupçon is the basic unit of irony) that my innate inclination to sleep is awakening!)

Tuesday Hatred: A funny sort of knowledge

Hate. Isn’t it nearly 2010?

I hate that I ran into some douchebag’s car door on Thursday, whilst riding my new bicycle. It was, let me be clear, his fault; I was negotiating the space between the stationary (yet door-labile) cars on my right and the moving cars on my left, coasting gently downhill and applying my brakes like a good, responsible cyclist, when the bagmonger opened his door with such excellent timing that he neither knocked me to the side (good) nor gave me time to stop (bad). I will give him this, he was extremely apologetic, at least until (a) he discovered that his front door no longer closed all the way and (b) I inquired as to whether he might want to help defray the costs of repairing the damage to my bicycle (which was new), at which point his concern for the dear self reasserted itself. At least I got him better than he got me.

I hate the fatigue with which I’ve been laboring lately. I went to bed at 9:30pm on Sunday. It means that I have missed a number of concerts. I also hate that I will miss a number of concerts this coming weekend because I’ll be at parties. I hate that my priorities are evidently disordered.

Tuesday Hatred: Ennui, Animal Style

When, traveling down a highway whose width is two lanes in each direction, one truck slowly pulls out of the right-hand lane into the left, in order to overtake the truck in front of it, and, like a youth rendered by his glands both more ponderous and more aggressive than his peers impetuously shouldering his way into a line, thereby sending ripples of backward, resentful steps among those in the disturbed line all the way to its end, lengthening it and slowing its progress, so that even after he decides that he is not interested in what awaits those at the head of the line, and so departs from it (for he entered it with no particular purpose or thought), the effects of his entry are still felt in the disorder he has wrought in the line, makes all the cars behind it slow down to the snail-like pace of 60 mph, even though they are in what is called, with increasingly little cause, the “fast lane”, this is hateful. It is all the more hateful when it happens several times in a row.

I hate last week’s dismal participation. What, were you all filled with HOLIDAY CHEER, or some such claptrap as that? I don’t believe it—not for an instant—I think you were just trying to make me feel bad. Well it worked. Meany-pantses.

I hate my non-toothsome kasha.

Hatesgiving Day: First we cook, then we chill

It’s that time of year again, that time when we remember what’s happened in the past year, the big and the little both, which we hate. But the little and big on a grand scale, please: do not limit yourself to the events or feelings of the past week! Think of it, if you like, as a purgative ritual, preceding the events of Thursday.

I can hardly manage the synopsis producing hatreds in line with what my own demands require, so you’ll get mostly the usual weekly annoyances from me: I hate that I left for socal without having put more thought into what to make for dessert for thanksgiving. I hate certain aspects of my living situation, such as the weird social limbo that the public spaces, and those who enter into them, occupy. I hate the SF rental market. I hate the inconsistency of my work habits. I hate how little I exercise. I hate the general way I relate to people I don’t already know fairly well.

Tuesday Hatred: Karma Don’t Deny Me

I hate that, as a result of Joe Frank’s long ago having been “let go” from the station, one cannot stream his shows for free from KCRW’s webbage. I also hate, let me remark by the by, that I completely forgot about the TH this week and so I write this at 11:19 (pacific) Monday night, entirely devoid of inspiration (but increasingly full of holland gin). I hate that last thursday I left my phone charger at school, not so much because I get tons of calls (I don’t, nor do I make tons of them) but because, since I have no watch, it is the only means of telling time I have when “on the go”. I mean aside from asking people, or observing things around me that display the time. I hate that the denial of in-home washing and drying machine availability to which I alluded many Tuesdays ago has finally become actual. I hate that after a brief period of not being single I am single again and have been for a while. Truly I hate many and various things, but let’s be honest, why should I plumb the depths of my troubled psyche for you people who never (or hardly ever) contribute in like wise? Especially this late at night.

Tuesday Hatred: unwind-protect

I hate overly-refrigerated businesses. It is, after all, November; it should not be colder within than without the cafe. One would have thought this went without saying—and it is true that less has to be done in my locale to effect the hated differential than in others, where its undesirability would be thus rendered more apparent—but still!

I hate the so-called feature of so-called internet so-called dating sites, whereby one can “view” by whom one’s “profile” has been “viewed”. It makes it possible to know quite clearly when communication, having been established in one direction, will not become bidirectional: namely, when, having sent a one a missive, you see that that one then “v”s your “p”, and—nothing. This is worse than merely nothing because of the element of judgment.

I hate that the depths of procrastination I’ve been plumbing lately have yielded nothing even remotely as useful as reading knowledge of Italian. I hate that our gracious host outdoes everyone even as regards not working.

Tuesday Hatred: Chancy Endeavor

It sure would be nice, I think, if the participants in Critical Mass showed their fellow cyclists approximately the same courtesy that they (the participants’ fellow cyclists) get from the drivers of automobiles. For instance, for the most part, the drivers of automobiles cause their conveyances to remain outside the bicycle lanes. This is convenient for many reasons, not the least of which is that it enables those people who use their bicycles to get from place to place to travel at a reasonable speed. In the context of Critical Mass, there would be a further convenience, namely, it would enable people who dislike being surrounded by hooting yahoos to minimize their time in such company. Since I gather that part of the point of CM is to be unpleasant, it’s probably too much to ask that they stop at red lights and let perpendicular traffic through, though maybe they could work out a way to leave a buffer wide enough for cyclists but not cars. Having turned off Market at Hayes (which is earlier than normal) I was very upset to discover that my massive nemeses had also turned off of market, a few blocks on, and were blocking my Hayesish path, despite the light change. I was tempted to dismount and walk as slowly as possible across the intersection, perhaps coming to a deliberate halt in front of a brakeless fixie-rider, but I didn’t think that would end at all well. And besides, I didn’t actually want to get hit. (In fact Market doesn’t have proper bike lanes separate from the auto lanes, but nevertheless autos and heteros manage to coexist reasonably ok on it; better, anyway, than my hetero and those of the Critical Massholes did.)

I was recently reminded of my corporeality, and not in a fun way, either; more like in the way that an extremely novice ship’s pilot might be. The culprits included, as is listed in the great “Selbstporträt mit Kater“, “Fuselöle, Aldehyde, Restalkohol”—a pregnant list. “Restalkohol” perhaps refers to the head and the tail, the first and last of what comes off the still, typically discarded in favor of the “heart” from the middle, but in the given context we can discern another significance. The Restalkohol is not the waste on either end but the excess that cannot be incorporated, the recalcitrant aldehyde which, being pure content without form, is not assimilable and will, until it is passed (through the head or the tail!), dwell uncomfortably in the body and interrupt its proper functioning, resulting in such behaviors as dropping things, saying things you mean, and walking unsteadily.

As you might have noticed, I’ve been experimenting with a new format for the TH in which I don’t say “I hate p” or even, for the most part, discuss my hatred itself at all. Rather I wish to focus on the object of my hatreds. The passion itself is not the thing. Though I am very passionate. Ladies.

Tuesday Hatred: Somaesthetics

Monday morning—this morning, as I write this Monday night—I gave myself a ferocious neck-crick and shoulder-muscle-pull which has not left me. Nor the diligent application of topical analgesics which promise also to rush blood to the affected area, nor the unrestrsained ingestion of ibuprofen, nor watching A Serious Man aided me, and I go to bed tonight fearing that when I wake up I will be unable to lift my head from the pillow, having already, in an ill-advised attempt to relax, lain down and found that the rising did more damage than the resting ameliorated. The fact that this fate should be visited on me so recently after I began reading a book concerned, among other more intellectually recondite matters, with yoga and Alexander Technique (the thing which links John Dewey and Robert Fripp), is an irony whose significance is, I confess, lost on me.

I hate that I forgot the synonym for “diligent” I wanted to use above. (It may have been “assiduous”.) I hate also that it took me all day recently to remember the really rather jejune word “refrain”.

Tuesday Hatred

This is, I believe, the first subtitle-less Tuesday Hatred in living memory, and possibly the first subtitle-less weekly feature since the pre-TH. True fact: it was my post-titling practices that led to the adoption of such subtitles here. TRUE!

None of the above is relevant to this week’s hatreds, which are of such staggering variety and quality that I suspect you will all be quite emotionally worn out by the time you finish reading and, if you contribute, contributing. Many of the hatreds this week concern technology. I don’t mean to spend an excessive period on the preamble, but you might, if you harbor a special hatred for the cleverer and more manipulative of the works of man, take extra time to “limber up” prior to this stroll through the world of the tools of men.

I’ll start with one that’s fairly “relatable”, I hope. My phone, as do many, includes among the information it displays on its screen a little meter indicating the pattery [stet][1] life remaining to it. What a useful feature! Except in fact it’s completely useless, since it will indicate full or full-less-one status continuously until, suddenly, it is empty or empty-plus-one, with seemingly no transition between the extrema (or if one should catch it in its middle state, one can reduce it almost to nothingness by the simple expedient of actually making a phone call). It’s similar to my car’s gas meter, actually, which remains optimistically high for the first hundred miles before beginning to drop precipitously. I mind this less, because gas stations are plentiful while one drives, while one is infrequently able to stop wherever one is to charge one’s phone. Let’s be clear: I hate this misfeature of my phone. I understand that it’s to be found generally. Hateful.

Here’s something else worth hating on, perhaps a little more abstruse: if you rename a file under revision control using subversion, this is implemented as first adding a copy of the file in the new location, then deleting it from its old location. Hey—here’s an idea—why not treat it as moving the fucking file? Then when you commit the change you wouldn’t have to do so by uploading an entirely new copy of it, but could instead communicate to the central repository that file such-and-such has, you know, been moved. Likewise when updating a different non-central repository one wouldn’t need to download the whole damn thing again, if all that differs is the location. And the revision history would be maintained. People do rename files, after all.

I hate that I regularly receive emails from Steve Madden or his agents soliciting my custom as a purchaser of shoes and boots. Everyone one of them warns me that it’s my last! chance!!, and yet I’ve been getting them for weeks and weeks. I hate the feeling, not quite of hunger though it does manifest itself in part as a feeling of stomachic emptiness, which sometimes overcomes one and makes concentration difficult. One can tell that it is not hunger since food does not assuage it. I hate that many of my regular IM correspondents have been offline more and more lately. I hate the construction on Valencia (though I suppose I will be glad regarding its effects when it’s finished), and I hate that I managed to miss, owing to social engagements in two cases and being at a different concert in another, all of John Butcher’s concerts in Oakland and SF last week. Though I suppose I shouldn’t hate having had social engagements at all. I hate how pleased I feel when a musician at a concert recognizes me from a previous concert I’ve attended.

I hate that Routledge didn’t preserve the pagination of the original edition when they reissued as a Classic The Phenomenology of Perception. All the citations in the literature (at least the literature prior to the reissue; the Cambridge Companion cites three page numbers: the French, the original issue of the translation, and the repaginated reissue) are, considered as indices into the edition most easily got hold of, increasingly inaccurate as the book goes on (what was once p 145 has become p 166; what was once p 265, p 309). One wonders who exactly Routledge thought the audience for this not exactly untechnical book would be, and what its purchasers would do with it. I hate also that the citations to within PP to M-P’s earlier book are given only to La Structure du Comportement and not additionally to The Structure of Behavior, which in fairness may not have been published when The Phenomenology of Perception was first translated but listen, if you’re reissuing the book and repaginating it anyway, why not make this small revision too, which would actually be useful to those without French (especially since those with French would surely read Phénomènologie de la perception)?

It is amusing to contrast the selected secondary sources of the SEP article on M-P and the contributorship of the Cambridge Companion to M-P.

[1] A phonological typo?