Active Surplus, mid-afternoon:
“Accordion Guy,” said the stubble-faced, sweat-drenched, too-jaded-for-his-age guy behind the counter as he lit his cigarette with a soldering iron, “if it’s got boobs, an engine or a processor, sooner or later, it’ll give you nuthin’ but trouble.”
I’m pleased to announce this blog’s move to Blogger Pro, which means a couple of things:
Now if I can only get my hosting company to map kode-fu.com properly….
Biella Coleman from the EFF has come up to Toronto and staying at Casa di AccordionGuy for the week. She’s just arrived, and I’ll be showing her the neighbourhood in a couple of minutes.
I love playing tour guide.
A couple of phone conversations further underscoring the fact that I’m not boring enough. What is it with you people?
M: You’re pretty urban, aren’t you?
Me: Urban?
M: Very at home in the city. The noise, the traffic, the craziness, the things that happen when you carry your accordion around…
Me: I guess so. Until I went to Kingston, Toronto was the least urban place I’d ever lived in.
M: Your life is a little…fast. I don’t know if I could keep up with that kind of thing.
And shortly after that, she stopped returning my messages.
Maybe what happened on our date freaked her out more than I thought.
Me: So, hypothetically speaking, going out with me would be a bad idea because…?
R: Our lifestyles are way too different. I wear suits to work, you wear skater shirts and running shoes. You like to go out; I like to stay in. I like well-planned weekends; you once flew to DC so that some girl wouldn’t have to see the Dalai Lama alone…
Me: Hey, I had some airline points and she was cute. Besides, the Dalai Lama is one deep brutha.
R: Last week, you just hopped in your car and drove to Guelph to gather around a bonfire with people you didn’t know!
Me: I was invited, and I needed to get outdoors. I’d been cooped in a conference hotel in the blandest part of NoCal all week!
R: All that stuff — it’s just not my kind of thing.
How boring — or is stable a better word — do I have to be?
I don’t have any tattoos or piercings because I hate needles. I take my vitamins every day. I’m a non-smoker, I have no drug addictions and I don’t go on serious benders very often. I clear my credit card balance at the end of every month. I visit my parents every Sunday for our family dinner. I know which fork is for salad and which is for the main course. I have never had to phone for bail money from a Mexican holding cell. For Chrissake, I have white couches!
(Seriously, if white non-IKEA, non-discount, non-hand-me-down couches don’t say “stable”, I don’t know what does.)
More later…
Before I begin, let me set the mental soundtrack. Think of Being Boring by the Pet Shop Boys, the opening track from their very excellent 1990 album, Behaviour. It’s lush, loungy, and I really love this song, both musically and thematically. I also think it’s appropriate for this story.
(If the song doesn’t ring a bell, you can find a fair-use-friendly 59-second sample of Being Boring on this page.)
Here’s the last verse and chorus:
Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here and some are missing
In the nineteen-nineties
I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me
‘Cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: “Make amends”
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend
Got that tune running in your head? Good. Let’s begin.
Monday, July 1st
The scene: Tequila Bookworm (here’s a photo), a cafe-meets-magazine store-meets-used book reading room with cute staff. There’s a bar and tables in the front and ratty but comfy couches in the back. It’s been a neighbourhood hangout for years; many of my stories start here.
I was sitting with a table full of women eating ice cream and brownies. My friend Z was there; she’d given me a ring and asked her to join them. I arrived just in time to catch the part of the conversation where she was talking about some guy she’d been set up with:
Z: I went out for drinks with Q today.
Me: How’d that go?
Z: He’s nice. He’s got lots to talk about, he’s well read, he’s well travelled, and another good thing about him is that he’s a little boring. I’ve grown to like that.
Me: Boring?
Z: Yeah?
Me: Boring is good?
Y: Maybe a little is okay. It means they’re stable.
X: I can see that.
Me (still trying to grasp the concept): But boring is good?
W (to me): Let me guess: you’ve already bought your Burning Man tickets and now want a refund?
Y: Are we going to see a new Joey next week? Wearing a cardigan, driving a mini-van, maybe with his natural hair colour?
Me (in a Mr. Rogers voice): “The missionary position. Not just a good idea; it’s the law!”
W: Ha!
X: Now that’s boring.
Z: You’re far from boring.
Me: Uh, thanks, but isn’t that a bad thing now?
To be continued…
I’m killing a little time waiting for Will to return from the ‘burbs, so allow me to point you folks to these two latest entries in The Happiest Geek on Earth:
Bjarne would be proud. Inspired by my Lisp porn, which was inspired by the Perl porn that Brit journo/Warchalking inventor Ben Hammersley pointed out, Martin “Coderman” Peck has made his own C++ porn.
It’s all Dvorak’s fault. But before I begin, a riddle:
Q: What’s the difference between John Dvorak’s office and a cactus?
A: On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.
But seriously folks, the animal chosen for the cover of O’Reilly’s upcoming book on Blogging is probably his fault.
