Random burblings since 1999
It’s been lying forlornly next to my desk for over a year now, it’s 15″ monitor gathering dust. I keep meaning to re-format it, and do something with it, but what?
It has no USB ports, a PII chip, 128MB of RAM and a whopping 8GB hard disk.
Any suggestions?
Just do it tm
So proclaimed the advert.
‘Just’ – as in merely, only, or ‘it’s no big deal’. Not as in righteous or true.
‘do’ – as in execute, perform. Not as in beat up or shag.
‘it’ – impersonal verb.
All in I can’t stand that damn slogan. It’s so patronising. Akin to someone telling you to ‘get a grip’ and ‘pull yourself together’ which are invariably the phrases that people reach for when you mention that you are feeling a bit low, or down, or just not yourself. Most times it’s said with that mock tone used to imply that it’s being said in partial jest. Partial being the operative word, most times we try and mask the true meaning of something using humour. I do it as well, but then humour is my self-defense mechanism, something that I reach for in times of stress, a form of protection.
Anyway, I’m fine but a friend has had some bad news. Nothing to be discussed here but concerning nonetheless. Coping with that news is the hard part and that’s what reminded me of that bloody slogan and all those platitudes. Annoyingly, despite my hatred of those phrases, they popped into my head. It’s probably social conditioning I guess, but it’s still annoying.
But are they merely platitudes? Do they not hold some value? The slump, the downward spiral is easy to get into, fighting out of it is much harder, an uphill battle, a constant drain. You constantly have to analyse your own actions, your own wants and have to force yourself to do the opposite. Want to stay in bed all day? Get up and go for a walk. Want to shut the door and never talk to anyone ever again? Join a club, go to the pub, talk to strangers (Admittedly the last option is a bit extreme and may end up with you being locked up and not allowed to speak to anyone… what goes around and all that…). No, it’s not easy to do, but the alternative is surely much worse. What am I saying, of course it is, there is no ‘surely’ about it. The lowest points are easy to reach, and it’s from that knowledge that suicide surely becomes the cowards choice, the easy way out.
I digress (and quite bloody far too).
So, let’s alter that slogan to: Just Do it.
There that’s much better. A command rather than an off-the-cuff remark. An instruction rather than a patronising message of liberation.
I should exercise and phone my Mum more often. I should spend less time on the PC and read more books. I should lose weight. I should practise piano more than once every six months. I should stop waffling on about these things and DO them!
What should you do?
Brian has a bit of a dilemma for you: It concerns the “issue of people with behavioural problems being in public places”.
Interesting one this. No correct answer I guess, just a situation to be handled with great tact. Go and leave some comments at his site.
(Great, now I’ve got that Sum 41 track in my head… hmm quite catchy…)
Tuesday night is Louise’s ‘night out’ with our friend Susan. They go shopping, go to the cinema, or just veg out with facepacks and wine. I’m left at home (thankfully).
I usually have a few items that I want to get done, and spend a few minutes tidying up or doing the dishes before the night is really mine. I really should push on with the PHP thing, I’ve got a re-design to start (for another site: I said I’d have a BETA with them by Christmas last year.. oops), I’ve got episodes of the new Smallville season to watch, about five episodes of the new 24 season to get through, and all of Sopranos season 4 to watch.
I’ve also got a few things needing done to the home PC (finding the device driver that keeps crashing the system), the ‘collectorz’ cataloguing software glares up at me from it’s shortcut on my desktop demanding that I fill it with all my books, CDs, and DVDs. There is a stack of books waiting to be read, not to mention a few ‘kept’ bits from the Sunday papers, and several bookmarked ‘longer’ articles that I’ve been meaning to read for months.
I keep telling myself that I’ll do a little exercising as well, the free weights laugh at me as I stub my toe on them, and the Yoga and Pilates books chuckle quietly to themselves as I moan and groan whilst struggling to bend over far enough to untie my shoelaces.
And what will I do? I’ll plonk myself down in front of the telly, channel surf for a couple of hours, play a little Pro Evolution Soccer on the Playstation before heading up to the PC and surfing randomly for another hour or so.
Before I know it, Louise will be home asking me what I’ve done.
“This and that, nothing much really.”
Such is life.
In what is rapidly becoming a standard Friday post, I’m going to look ahead to the weekend coming and, once again, list several things that I won’t do despite planning to.
First up is to get some items onto eBay. Unless of course any of you would like to purchase one of 50 Pocket Dragons that we are hoping to be rid of (I should perhaps mention that these little green critters were a passion for Louise, we even attended a ‘members’ day once… no, seriously..).
Possibly a visit or two to the cinema. Still to see “Cold Mountain” (not something I’m immensely bothered about) Neither of us is too bothered about seeing “Cold Mountain”, so that leaves “Big Fish” and “School of Rock”. Unfortunately I’ll probably end up being dragged along to see “Cheaper by the Dozen” which features a certain Tom Welling whom my wife has a bit of a crush on…
Ehhh….
Louise mentioned something about washing the car, I keep threatening to tidy out a couple of boxes of PC stuff (cables, old speakers, keyboards etc), and there was mention of going for a walk…
All of the above is, of course, subject to whim and whimsy.
Any suggestions for a cheap weekend activity?
“I’ve recently rebuilt my PC, whilst doing so I took some extra time to clear out duplicate and old files and I came across the archives for this site, well what passes for archives at any rate as I’m not the most forward thinking or organised person.
Looking at those early attempts at HTML (via an angelfire home page.. then Xoom.. before my first ‘own’ page via LineOne) and how much I’ve learned since, made me realise that my ‘web tinkerings’ are actually a very good indication of my growth as a person.”