Garoo

For the first time tonight (I think? my memory may always be wrong, so I couldn’t swear, and I may be just offending someone here) I met one of my readers, someone I didn’t know at all before, or beyond, my blog. So, in order to protect the innocent, I’ll call him The Reader in the rest of this post. Except there won’t be any rest, because The Reader is one of this blog’s readers (did I make that clear the first time around?) and hence I can’t say everything I could want to. Or maybe I could, because I haven’t got anything negative to say, but if I don’t stick to that rule right away it’ll sound weird if someday I meet someone, hate him, and don’t mention him at all in my blog. Got the idea? My method is that the least you say, the least you risk saying blunders. I’ve already developed this habit of saying as little as I can about people who are liable to read the article. What I’m explaining here is diplomacy. Except that the simple fact of explaining it is poor diplomacy. But I need to justify the fact that I won’t say anything more about The Reader.

There. So, instead of that, I’ll give you a messy post summing up the various thoughts that have been cluttering my notepad.

These days, instead of counting my fingers while waiting for my train, I spend my time reading subway maps and discovering the area. Won’t go into details you don’t care about, like which of the forests around Paris is biggest, but I’m just wondering whether I should take some geography classes for summer. Always had a hard time with geography, but I realize it may be useful sometimes. (You know, some things you realize later than you should, that’s the way life goes.) Well, it’s not like I’ve got something else to do, is it?

I’m amazed at how many people get lost in Le Perreux-sur-Marne. Every other day I’m helping people find their way. Between that and the epidemy of Smart cars I mentioned earlier, I’m really going to think there’s a Bermuda Triangle right next to my home. I’m really scared. Well, sure, it’s better than getting mugged on your way home—but it doesn’t mean that can’t happen. (Nevermind that last part, I only wrote it out of superstition.)

It’s funny that I read Wil Wheaton’s post about his first book-signing session just a few hours before I had my first reader encounter. Too bad I had nothing to sign.

Since I realized it wasn’t that expensive, I’m really dying to have a photolog I would remotely update via phonecam. So I guess I really have to win the lottery, have I? I was quite skeptical in the beginning—actually, until I found out that French telcos weren’t going to miss the MMS train entirely as I thought—but I can now see that’s really the future of photologs. Not of blogs, because you’ll still need a keyboard in order to type lengthy posts like this one, but of a certain form of photologs. It’ll often be dull and boring, but it’s just like blogs: some individuals will manage to make something outstanding with it, and people will get ecstatic about that, and they’ll be famous, and as usual I won’t be an early adopter.

Speaking of which, I think the existence, and the unexpected success, of SMS (and soon MMS) is proof that the idea of pay-per-email (in order to eliminate spam) is more conceivable than you’d think. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I can quite imagine a parallel email system that would require a micro-payment to send messages. Just as if everyone went out and bought a second cell phone and published the number on their site so that readers could send SMS’s. Hey, that’s an idea. If I could afford it, I’d just do it. I already have an old battery-impaired phone that would do the job, I could turn off the ringer and leave it on all the time. But, well, I’m already wasting enough money on a phone line I never use, I’m not going to take another subscription just for fun. Still, it’s something one could really consider.

Just like pay-per-email. All it’d take would be that major providers, and major webmail systems, get together and establish a fee and a technical protocol, and we’re all set.

I feel like eating outside. All the time, every night. Sit at a table that isn’t my desk and doesn’t support a 17-inch monitor, eat something that doesn’t come out of my freezer, get served by an unfriendly bitch (you’ll note that I’m not so demanding), and preferredly eat with someone. Anything: steak and fries, or a kebab, or even a McDonald’s menu, provided it’s sold ready-to-eat and hot. And, while we’re at it, I’d like to receive a check every month so I could pay for my food, and my groceries, and my rent, and my clothes (did you know I only have one pair of trousers and two t-shirts I can really wear?). Something like a paycheck. But paying me for nothing, just for the fun of it.

So much for complaining: so now I do have someone I can think of when I close my eyes before I sleep. But when I was saying I missed that, I didn’t dare to specify that I would have liked it to be reciprocal this time. For a change. Yeah, it’s a detail, but it’s a little important somehow. I didn’t dare to specify it, and there I am, meeting a boy that’s cute, nice, pleasant, just my style and everything, and just isn’t that interested (yet he was supposed to be, virtually). Just my luck. Okay, I sound like I’m complaining, like I’m never happy, but imagine that the last time I was in a real relationship, where both of us felt something for each other, was in 1999. Not the same century. Even for people who believed we changed centuries in 2000, it wasn’t the same century. So I just want something! I don’t know how I deserved that bad karma, but it’s got to end at some point!