Flakes, bookshops and Camus

Visited a great little used bookstore in Harvard Square the other day. One of my friends opened Camus' "The Plague" and found a tax return check for $475. She takes it to the counter and the man there breaks out laughing. "She works here," he says. "She's such a flake!"

I thought about it. That is ridiculous, but exactly the kind of thing I would do. She placed her check -probably as a bookmark - into the book, and somehow, without remembering, shelved it in the bookstore and then - responsibly - filed for a new check, but still...

That woman, is me . I love her, with all her flaws.

Acutane

My roomie is going on acutane for her acne and brought back this huge reader that she has to go through before she starts the 5 month course. Supposedly we have to watch her for depresison and crying spells while she's on the pills. More than that though... Apparently you SHOULD NOT GET PREGNANT while on the meds. So the reader has a whole set of sections trying to dispel the myths around sex and getting pregnant so that the patients don't accidently knock themselves up.

My favourite myth of all:

" 'Sexually active' means that you move during sex. If you don't move, you can't get pregnant."

I have no words

Retired confessions... that is all.

I got paid yesterday. Kaching!!! So I am DETERMINED to retire this confession:

" I don't know how to manage money. I spend too much. Where did I get these expectations for the kind of life I want to live? Perhaps I have illusions about who I am. "

This check is going to last a looooong time - if I can help it. I'll let you know when I decide who I am. In the meanwhile I have a new confessions, based wholly in my job, my anger and my frustration:

"me hate authority. Authority hate me."

This is in part in honour of the pallindrome that is now Na's age. Welcome to 22 Na and thanks for the shoutout. You boosted my mood. With the crap that's been happening, I'm due for an upturn in life.

Lessons from The Fountainhead, part 2

It seems that this book is still haunting my existence. I am playing with ads by google and one of them popped up about ayn rand. So it seems I should return to my little reflection on The Fountainhead.


My other posts on it are under the 'literature' tab. So here's another installment.

"It was not malice. It was not judgement passed upon his merit. They did not think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not that his body was exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes." page 99.

So many things come to mind. The most immediate is the art of blogging. You always have the choice of making these thing public. What is worse than people hating you... people not caring. Almost makes me want to shut down on those privacy setting and make it for my eyes only. But then, how would I ever discover if I was good. How would you?

But on a larger note... It's true that people usually don't give you the chance to show that you are good. Many people usually dont care. Few people are willing to take a chance on a stranger. Thats why, in my PSCI class on Social Capital, I thought that sometimes, social capital is a bad thing. It encourages nepotism and closed-mindedness.

Why dont we all take a chance on someone and something new today.