Tuesday, October 26, 2004

the DSL cometh

I'll be getting DSL installed at my new place sometime in the next 48 hours. The installer dude is coming over between 1:30 and 5:30, today or tomorrow.

In other news: I'm beginning to cool down about the Saturday fiasco. What's the use in staying angry at Mr. J? He's being used as a tool by upper management, like the rest of us. My acceptance of (most of) the system makes me complicit in my own misfortune*, too.

Luckily, my mind has been distracted from its anger by one of the lovelier gifts to accompany cooler weather: static electricity. There's nothing quite like turning your pants into a Van de Graaff generator for your scrotum just by walking down the street. People see the blue glow emanating from my crotch and probably assume I'm suffering from DSB**; little do they know that the lambent, crackling phenomenon behind the zipper is much more glorious.

Heh. Ball lightning.




*Back in the late 1960s, Peter Berger published his classic work, The Sacred Canopy, a book that tackles religion from a sociological point of view. Perhaps the most disturbing chapter in the work is Chapter 3, on theodicy. Berger defines theodicy loosely enough to include more than theistic attempts at resolving the problem of evil. For Berger, any complex rationalization of our suffering is a form of theodicy-- anything that both puts suffering in cosmic perspective and makes it somehow seem either "right and proper" or "understandable." Berger's conclusion is that the various theodicies are all a type of sickness in the human condition. The image he uses is that of the abuse dynamic, in which the abused party comes to reconcile himself/herself with the abuser, perhaps even coming to love the abuser. Humanity, faced with the mysterium tremendum of the divine, learns simply to cope with suffering rather than attempting to eliminate it. Maybe in a later blog post, I'll relate how I've dealt with Berger's perspective, with which I only partially agree.

**Deadly Sperm Buildup, a term coined (as far as I know) by a college buddy back in undergrad.

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