whiskey in a teacup . com

It took until well into my mid-twenties, but I have finally reached a conclusion:  I prefer the electric version of “Revolution” to the acoustic “Revolution 1″.  Greatly so, in fact.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Before putting my contacts in this morning, I noticed a strange plastic box on my mother-in-law’s bookshelf.   “What the hell is this?” I wondered aloud, squinting at it in puzzlement.  It was, in fact, a 14.4K modem.  Nestled placidly among old books and photos, it may as well have been a butter churn or a monocle, and I chuckled at it derisively.

I have hazy memories of connecting to Prodigy in the early nineties on a 2400 baud dial-up, so painfully slow you had to disable images or else web pages would literally never finish loading.  If I’m lucky enough to have children one day, I hope to show them one such old modem and tell them of the dire suffering we endured before the turn of the century, when even a four-times-as-fast 9600 bps connection required one to sit patiently for about fifteen minutes waiting for a single photo of David Bowie to load.  Uphill both ways, in the snow, etc.

Unfortunately this holiday finds me in an unusually low mood.  How low?  Not quite “Klaus Nomi singing The Cold Song with full orchestral accompaniment shortly before dying of AIDS” low, but pretty low nonetheless.  On the bright side, I’ve finally found an excuse to post that link!  Health and happiness to you and yours, and may your oil keep burning.

So, I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but today I have exciting news!  After two and a half years as an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) I am now an RN (Registered Nurse)!  What’s the difference, you ask?  In most states, the difference is money.  In Massachusetts, it’s also about money but more about pure marketability.  We’re a very anti-LPN state (LPN unofficially stands for Lowly Paid Nurse, and RN for Real Nurse), which means that most desirable jobs are open to RNs only.  (It’s also about respectability, since most people think that LPNs do fundamentally different or lesser work than RNs, but that part honestly means fuck-all to me.)  This new license doesn’t exactly bust the doors open for me, as the “nursing shortage” is a complete myth here in the Commonwealth.  I have been extremely lucky to have a good job for the past two years, and I’ll be staying there until I find something more desirable, whenever that may be.  Huzzuh.

Once you get past the “sleeping with makeup on” stage of your relationship with Netflix and more into the “peeing in front of each other” stage, it turns its main page into a list of recommended sub-genres for you based on your viewing history.  Apparently, what Netflix has learned about me over the years is that I’m a pretentious fuck who very occasionally likes to laugh.  These are my current recommended sub-genres:

Films from Germany from the 1970s
Foreign Classic Dramas from the 1970s
Films from France
TV Sitcoms
Foreign Dramas

Which is funny because “documentary” is by far my favorite genre of film, and it would fit right in with my thoroughly stereotyped personality!  But I digress.  Thanks to movie rental algorithm technology, I spent a rainy Sunday watching Fassbinder flicks before retiring to a night of very poor sleep.  I woke up to a gray, damp Monday which eventually became springlike and lovely, but my back ached, and I read about the latest terrorist attacks, and I felt such a heavy dread about the state of the world and all its ugliness and even more guilt for my own good fortune.  I’ve spent the evening glumly, and it’s time to rest, but since my paramour is away I’m taking the laptop and a movie to bed with me tonight.  I think I’m going to break with tradition and watch a rom-com.