TWW Week

This has been one hell of a week. What do I remember best about it? Three things: the law (read: long, painful - and I am masochistic - hours dedicated to figuring out the law when no country seems to have done the same), The Fountainhead (that's for another day; I'm still reading... intermittently), and The West Wing [hereinafter, "TWW"].

When work is done for the day and you know you must sleep because tomorrow is going to be another long haul, you don't generally sleep. Instead, you prop yourself up on the bed, pick that red, sexy portable hard drive (and pray, even if you're an agnostic, that your elitist laptop drops a pick-up line) and drift away into West Wing land. And if there was a God, I'd thank her/him/it for TWW without spite and without disagreement; it has gotto be the best show ever created. Never mind that Sorkin was a junkie; never mind that real politics is never like its portrayed - for sheer wit, biting dialogue, character building, laughter, hope, idealism and unadulterated fun, TWW beats all.

Today, I could spend a little while cribbing about how the fourth season doesn't have as much wit and pace as the first three - but that would be uncharitable. It's kept up steady, unchanging rhythm and brilliance for 71 episodes (the specials, people, the specials) and I'm just going to forgive the troughs. In the sine wave that is television drama, there's got to be some of those, after all. For now, I'm just going to remember the best moments.


Like this one:

Toby: Have them send us two panda bears.
Mandy: China is not inclined to give us gifts right now.
Toby: Then get us two regular bears. A bucket of black paint, a bucket of white paint, bam-bam. Next case.

How can you not like the man? Wait. Erase that. How can you not worship that snarky wit and flawless delivery?

Pwn

Everyone who has spoken to me in the past couple of days will have heard me say this multiple times, but: College is deserted. There is pretty near no one around (I've counted three people), and it would be an understatement to say this is rather unusual. I'm used to this place as a madding crowd; a sea of people; pandora's box of chatter; a noisy, gossipy, overpopulated campus. And now it's empty.

It is funny, exhilarating and incredible: I am the only person in the library right now. I kid you not. The only person. Really. Three floors and never-ending racks of books (I can pile up two hundred and you can't stop me), two lovely staircases (and a banister to slide down, and no frowns), rows and rows of cubicles to choose from and a great expanse of unplanned space - ALL MINE. All mine. I could stand here and read out loud, declaim poetry on solitude and time and life and death, play music so loudly it will echo; I can dance and sing and deem the whole world mine, because it is. It's an absolutely mad feeling. I love it.

This is a new one for me; a post of this kind - a momentary idea, badly phrased, incompletely expressed, but just scribbled down in the spur of the moment. So what?

THE WORLD IS ALL MINE.

what's the big deal about technology?

In the early days of the motorcycle trip, Pirsig describes John and Sylvia as the 'hiding' kind of people - they need technology; their lives are made desirably and necessarily comfortable by it. But they cannot and do not try to understand technology, because all forms of it is alien to them - from a water tap to a motorcycle to a computer chip. Now, Pirsig doesn't understand how it is possible for people to be like that, but it is.

Here I am, toiling over trying to understand encryption and hosting and legal jurisdiction over ISPs, ICPs and other telecom providers, and I would be perfectly happy not knowing. So long as I can listen to my music, and download (albeit with a pirate's patch over mine eyes) my movies/TV shows and books, why does it matter how, where and why the hosting is done?

Actually, it does matter, and Napster, Blackberry, Limewire, Yahoo! and tons of others would tell you that. It does matter, because our rights to free speech, privacy, autonomy, access to and freedom to impart information are all affected directly. Only... complicated, y'know?

Rant done.