Friday, October 19, 2001

Today's Bloggal theme: "Technology, Friend… or Foe?"

1. Lead boy colleague, fed up with cell phone nonsense with employer complaining about his work-issued phone bills vows tonight (like right NOW) to let said phone sail from his fingertips out his speeding car's window and through the air and off of a high steel bridge.
I am despondent that I cannot be there to photographically document this event.
Technology - pure foe, leading to exciting yet x-treme behaviour.

2. My so-called rag employer (being freelance I view the universe as my employer) wants to quibble/nickel&dime about an equipment fee of $50 for a pager which I use for the newspaper gig. My first pager was provided by Yours Truly. This so-called employer of your fav Nancy wants to provide me with another pager turned in my a sensible employee seeking employment elsewhere. And then, after a dozen years, I would have a new pager number. This so-called employer doesn't drop one drop of gas in my gas tank, hasn't come up with a digital camera which was a condition of new era of this job (and not leaving to go elsewhere), hasn't provided me with a raise ("salary" = abysmal) in a number of years. Oh, after a dozen years I got health insurance and he yelled at the person who works at the newspaper who gave me hard facts about who has h.i. at this establishment. I have been consulting mentors about leaving this job for forever.
Technology in this case - friend, it's inciting productive thought.

3. Camera is a machine, responsive and durable. It's a helpful tool.
Always a friend.

4. Through a bank of technology next week I will appear on television as a co-host on cable access, yet again. Single malt scotch prior to the appearance is a tool to help words spill out in a cascade of lyrical brilliance.
Scotch, a techological marvel.
Friend or foe?
Silly question.

Thursday, October 18, 2001

Being the lovable scamp that I am I'm pondering how to get the editor friend who never learns her lesson(s) and keeps assigning me stories for her shiny happy mag to fly me to Las Vegas for a piece I dreamed up. It's for their wedding issue and again I'm a contributor to the trillion dollar wedding industry - and wedding fact dissemination machine. Just doing my share. And so the piece is to be about ten of the weirdest most x-treme weddings that ever were. I'm thinking Hey, wait a minute, why not fly off to Vegas while it's still really cheap and interview people in the midst of the hurricane of love and vows and paperwork and cheez whiz? And then I can go to the all-you-can-muster sushi bar Karen keeps telling me about.
Always thinking, always thinking, your absolute fav and industrious Nancy.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

I bought the new edition to one of my fav photo textbooks from my formative college era. It was, back in the day, referred to as Upton & Upton but since the divorce it's London & Upton. If you can't admit that you're always learning you are an arse.
Stopped on way back to home office hovel/work shack in the scary version of a locally-owned record emporium where an armed man stands guard unsmilingly. Can't one be armed and peppy? They had Macy Gray filed under some stupid new hits section at the front of the store, not under G in pop/rock. As I was meandering and lusting I overheard a great disc on the pa and asked the gangly record shoppe boye what it was. And he told me it was a used cd from a great NYC label. The disc he snapped onto the counter and it was $6.49 and then he said if he sold it to me he couldn't enjoy it so he turned me onto that label and another, Ninja. No compilations were there so I took a $15 plunge off a 300' cliff and bought a double cd from Ninja featuring 3 dj's doing their respective and respectable things. I might have to return to tell him he ROCKS but I sensed an already healthy record store boy ego. So no mo ego flo.

Monday, October 15, 2001

On Friday The Donnas performed in shitty lighting in front of the requisite boys watching them with the respect they'd shine on The Ramones - with the bonus of being able to watch boobies bobble up and down. Singing Donna is now not the cutest Donna, drumming Donna is. And, quite frankly, I'm way too busy this lifetime to memorize their appropriate post-Donna initials. They're a good antidote to the surging corporate rock in the world. Now the phrase corporate rock is making me think of Kurt Cobain's RS cover t-shirt "Corporate rock still sucks."
On Saturday, mid-day in the sun in the middle of an exurb of the middling city, I was surrounded by lady bugs. Usually, in the city, in my garden, I see one and maybe it's one which has departed for the big azalea in the sky and its legs are dried up but its red is still shining on. These were hundreds of living, buzzing, flying lady bugs.
On Sunday an evening meeting in a faux jungle cave with a gathering of favorites. And then there was the faux boxing. Me in the ring with a faux opponent not in my weight class and not in my sexual or racial category. And I beat him down. And I was dripping with real sweat and triumphant and did a non-faux boxing move I've seen so many of my boxing brethren do: punched my faux gloves together as a symbol to the faux opponent to bring it faux on.