Back when

It is wise to remember that there are worse things than housemates who mysteriously hoard flatware, fail to clean the bathroom, or have no concept of putting away dishes once they're dry.

The departure this week of what can only be described as a gaggle of (now-former) co-workers has left me a bit wistful for the days when we all worked in a converted garage and still got all the free Odwalla we could drink (or leave, caps on, on desktops over the weekend in uninentional scientific experiments) and had people like Josh around as a steady source of entertainment. It was brain-melting work, and the pay was laughable, but the whole experience wound up being the sort of thing that, in retrospect, seems deceptively pleasant and simple and desirable.

That's probably just corporate burnout talking. But it is hard to watch good people walk out of your life.

'Cause I don't think that they'd understand

I'm not sure what to think about the fact that the anthem of my week, as best I can figure it, is the Goo Goo Dolls' Iris. This puts me in league with (in no particular order) self-identified outcasts, self-injurers, and the otherwise depressed (warning: there's a somewhat painful MIDI on this page).

Which is why, I must say, I'm intensely glad to be pulling myself out of the mopeyness of the past few days. There's just not much good that can be said of letting a pseudo-alternative radio hit speak for your mental state.

Someone posted this to Sinister yesterday: "music can’t save you if you haven’t decided you’ll be saved." Nothing really can, right? Salvation (like belief, and love) is at least a two-part process.

On the Sinister wisdom tip, this was and remains one of the most insightful things I've ever read there:

I hadn't slept properly in a month. You know that they say if you hate someone too much everything gets all twisted? Well, the same thing can happen with love, only that won't go away just because you decide it should. There's no way you can just leave it alone either, especially when the other person loves you back just as much, or thinks they do. I guess you wouldn't really understand unless you knew someone who made you so nervous that you couldn't speak to them for fear of having them despise you. You'd always be afraid of giving away something of your character and having them realise, instantly, that you are in no way their equal, or even their second best.

Jean-Marie and Eric

Jean-Marie LePen? The mind boggles. I remember reading about him in my high school French class (once a right-wing crackpot, always a right-wing crackpot, evidently), but even back then it seemed like his chance at being taken seriously was gone and not likely to return.

He's frightening and assholic enough to make Bush seem relatively like a left-leaning dream come true. Relatively.

I run into Eric in the office kitchen this morning, and we spend a few minutes catching up. My synopsis of the past few weeks includes a good deal of work-related whinging; his includes the announcement that he's gotten engaged. This makes my chin drop, my eyes widen, something in my stomach swell so completely with happiness and pride that I swear I'm feeling those two emotions in their very purest forms. And it occurs to me that that's a sensation I don't often experience--I'm used to my happiness and pride (and anger, and sadness, and fear) being tempered by other (often contradictory) emotions, which lessens their impact. I wish there were a way of stopping that distillation, of learning to let one feeling take over (however briefly) without finding myself somehow reining it in. But can that be taught? And isn't there something to be said for the tempered emotion (like the mixed drink, or the blended ice cream)?

At any rate, Eric's getting married. Which just goes to show that sometimes the people you fret about most turn out just fine.