Notes on yesterday
Sep. 16th, 2004 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugeeI had every intention of posting in here yesterday, but as you'll discover, I had a busy day:
I went into Lowell with my mom, in the morning: I had a couple print jobs to take care of at the CyberCafe... The night before, I'd been sadly thinking to myself that the "A.I." fandom was growing dormant, since hardly anyone has posted any new fics recently, and since the fanfiction group I co-moderate has been spammed twice in the past week... we tend to get spammed whenever it's been very quiet on the board... But as I was poking around ff.n, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a new "A.I." fanfic! And it's from a fan in Brazil... And it's in Portuguese... thank heaven for Babelfish: I ran the page through their online translator, which produced a literal translation... I'm currently revising it a little to make it more idiomatic, and I'm planning on posting the revised translation on the AIFFOA, where I've already linked up the untranslated version.
Also, I worked till closing last night. At first "Jim" had me sacking, but then things started to die down, and so then I was collecting overstock... lots of overstock... A whole huge carriage full of it. Then for some reason, they put me on sacking again, for this speed-demon cashier, think Speedy Gonzales on a bad caffiene bender, who was practically throwing the stuff down the conveyor belt, and more than once almost hit my hand with some large heavy items, including a 15 lb bag of ice. Said this one gentleman with a lovely Oz-trailian accent, watching me sack like crazy, "Here, are you trying to create a new wuh'ld rec-oh'd?" Said I, "Not really, I'm just trying to keep up with this cashier!", a none-too-subtle way of telling her to slow the heck down! Then "Jim" resuced me from that and had me putting away the overstock... and there was so much, I didn't get finished until well after nine. So I had to help break down the aisles, which I hate because that throws me in with the *KIDS* that work there and their foul language. Granted, I've come out with some zingers myself when I'm angry about something or I'm deliberately trying to denigrate something (ie. saying something like "that damned child pr0n0g4phy" [I spelled that in hex so it won't trip any wretched filtering software]), but I'm not using those kinds of words every. Other. Blasted. Word. You do that and it really makes those words less effective. I'm minded of Walker Percy's novel "Lancelot", in which the narrator makes this huge long list of all the stuff that has brought America into a state of moral bankruptcy, (including but not limited to "Jesus freaks, anti-Jesus freaks...") where he ends the setence with "school courses teaching grade-school aged children how to f***"; that makes for a really jarring period on the end of a long sentence. [Note: I am all for some way of teaching kids about "the birds n' the bees", but I think the current model doesn't work because it really reduces sexual matters to the bare nuts and bolts; the current model basically teaches kids how to copulate like animals instead of forming meaningful relationships *first*.] But as usual, I digress...
It got worse: once I punched out, I found that the doors had been locked from the inside. I had to holler to "Jim" to let me out. I know the object is to keep the kids from sneaking out at the end of the night, but God forbid there should be a fire or an explosion or some other catastrophe in that building?! Haven't these people heard about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in the early 1900s, where a bunch of women and young people died because the bosses locked the doors of the building and a fire broke out?! My dad told me, "Well, if anything should happen, break out a window with a big heavy object." I grinned malevolently and said, "Something like "Jim"'s other end?"
I went into Lowell with my mom, in the morning: I had a couple print jobs to take care of at the CyberCafe... The night before, I'd been sadly thinking to myself that the "A.I." fandom was growing dormant, since hardly anyone has posted any new fics recently, and since the fanfiction group I co-moderate has been spammed twice in the past week... we tend to get spammed whenever it's been very quiet on the board... But as I was poking around ff.n, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a new "A.I." fanfic! And it's from a fan in Brazil... And it's in Portuguese... thank heaven for Babelfish: I ran the page through their online translator, which produced a literal translation... I'm currently revising it a little to make it more idiomatic, and I'm planning on posting the revised translation on the AIFFOA, where I've already linked up the untranslated version.
Also, I worked till closing last night. At first "Jim" had me sacking, but then things started to die down, and so then I was collecting overstock... lots of overstock... A whole huge carriage full of it. Then for some reason, they put me on sacking again, for this speed-demon cashier, think Speedy Gonzales on a bad caffiene bender, who was practically throwing the stuff down the conveyor belt, and more than once almost hit my hand with some large heavy items, including a 15 lb bag of ice. Said this one gentleman with a lovely Oz-trailian accent, watching me sack like crazy, "Here, are you trying to create a new wuh'ld rec-oh'd?" Said I, "Not really, I'm just trying to keep up with this cashier!", a none-too-subtle way of telling her to slow the heck down! Then "Jim" resuced me from that and had me putting away the overstock... and there was so much, I didn't get finished until well after nine. So I had to help break down the aisles, which I hate because that throws me in with the *KIDS* that work there and their foul language. Granted, I've come out with some zingers myself when I'm angry about something or I'm deliberately trying to denigrate something (ie. saying something like "that damned child pr0n0g4phy" [I spelled that in hex so it won't trip any wretched filtering software]), but I'm not using those kinds of words every. Other. Blasted. Word. You do that and it really makes those words less effective. I'm minded of Walker Percy's novel "Lancelot", in which the narrator makes this huge long list of all the stuff that has brought America into a state of moral bankruptcy, (including but not limited to "Jesus freaks, anti-Jesus freaks...") where he ends the setence with "school courses teaching grade-school aged children how to f***"; that makes for a really jarring period on the end of a long sentence. [Note: I am all for some way of teaching kids about "the birds n' the bees", but I think the current model doesn't work because it really reduces sexual matters to the bare nuts and bolts; the current model basically teaches kids how to copulate like animals instead of forming meaningful relationships *first*.] But as usual, I digress...
It got worse: once I punched out, I found that the doors had been locked from the inside. I had to holler to "Jim" to let me out. I know the object is to keep the kids from sneaking out at the end of the night, but God forbid there should be a fire or an explosion or some other catastrophe in that building?! Haven't these people heard about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in the early 1900s, where a bunch of women and young people died because the bosses locked the doors of the building and a fire broke out?! My dad told me, "Well, if anything should happen, break out a window with a big heavy object." I grinned malevolently and said, "Something like "Jim"'s other end?"
