When I first discovered the Internets*, I was a big jerk about ASCII and stuff. I had a young man with whom I liked to flirtatiously instant message, and he was always sticking in little brbs and gr8s and things as jokes, and I would get all upset and say "ew" all the time to him. This disgust was entirely misplaced, as the young man was very eloquent and a good speller & was just having a laugh. But now I find myself in kind of an awkward position, which is that, while I dislike all the misspelling on the Internet (it's hard to read!), I much more dislike people whose "pet peeve" is misspelling on the Internet. I think the time has come on the Internet when people of a certain age & disposition can just avoid the really bad Internet spellers: most of them are pre-teens, after all, or subliterate pornographer-types, and you have no business skulking around either of those kinds of people.

That's why comments like this (on a message board I'm kind of ashamed that I read) are so irritating. This person is responding to another person's post where they said something about "inderstanding":

"Pardon me, but "inderstanding"? I assume your finger went to the right of the keypad a tad too much. :)"

Why is this person such a jerk? Has he or she never in his or her life made a typo? Why does he or she feel that it's necessary to make a little sarcastic comment? Also, the happy face does not mitigate anything. PS: I don't care if the "inderstanding" person was indeed mollified by the happy face & not insulted at all by the comment. The commenter is a BIG JERK.

Counterpoint: my boss just sent me an e-mail saying "Are you freer to come to a meeting in a few minutes"? And I was entirely on the point of saying, "Well, I'm freer, but not entirely free yet." But 1) I didn't, and 2) I think that's more okay than being like, "Freer? Looks like your finger strayed a tiny bit to the right when you were typing!!! Retard!!!!"

*Does making that joke make me a loser? Is that played out now? Probably. It's so difficult to be cool.

Spent the nights of this weekend in a web of nightmares, which woke me up every hour on the hour so that I could lie paralyzed in bed, trying through the thick haze of sleep to separate dream from reality: was there really a knock on the door? a weak, animal scream from downstairs? was this secret I'm trying to keep actually revealed? do we really wear rollerskates at work? am I indeed pregnant? I can say with some certainty that the answer to the last three is no (I figured out this morning that no-one finds out she's pregnant because her gynecologist mailed her a bank-statementy printout listing all the dates in the last few months when her eggs have been fertilized; even if they did do that, science ensures that once you're pregnant you're not in danger of becoming more and more and more pregnant, as the printout I received indicated.) But the knocks and bumps and screams are harder to disprove, as they took place in those weird night-terror dreams where you seem to be in your very bedroom, regarding all the familiar objects, but are completely paralyzed or only capable of slow, jerky, uncertain movement. Also there are pillows piled on top of you, and other immobilizing agents. Anyway, I didn't like it, and also I think the scream was real, because it was in the morning at about 7, and I heard it again after I kind of stood up. I ran to the window and saw nothing, and kind of convinced myself it was someone's pet parrot? But what if it was a neighbor being murdered? Is it absurd to knock on the door? "I heard a weak scream this morning; it could have been a parrot; it could have been a baby; it could have been miles away, but in case it was you, I'm checking, but if you were screaming at 7 AM there's probably very little I can do to help you now, at 5 PM." Lord, lord. I'm trying to convince myself that I am absurd.

Otherwise this weekend I played hostess to a photo shoot the IR wanted to do of a naked man; she wanted to put a bunch of drapery on my couch and she liked the color of my living-room walls and also she wanted to get away from the baby. The naked man came over wearing clothes and insisted on immediately smoking pot, which, given the fact that he had to be naked I can't really blame him for, and anyway I do work for a pot magazine, so I don't see why I'm being so missish about it. But I was kind of missish and made him step out onto the terrace. Then I went into my bedroom so they could shoot in privacy, and it was odd because I couldn't hear their voices at all, I could only see these blinding flashes coming under the door periodically, as if there were some kind of wizarding-battle going on in my living room, or a storm, or the apocalypse.

That was Saturday, and the thing is that Saturday was unbelievably gorgeous and sunny and springlike, and I scarcely went out at all, whereas on Sunday I had to go on an enormous walk to get my hair cut and it was all drizzly and made my hair look awful. But I went to eat some pad thai in a new restaurant that opened up--one of those narrow restaurants that's very high on design (flower-shaped plates, iridescent purple napkins, a long triangular cement sink in the bathroom with the water cascading onto your hands out of tiny holes in an elevated copper pipe) and very low on not having to knock over somebody's table in order to sit down. Then I was on my way home & I was kind of depressed about the weather and the chill and then slowly, having turned on my ipod, I was filled with a wondering joy at the low, gray, cloud-muscled sky and its occasional distant dark-gray birds, and the kindly rain-glazed tops of old-fashioned city buildings against the clouds, and the shining streets and sidewalks, and I thought how a sky that is covered in thick, shapely, clearly-discernable gray clouds is infinitely preferable to a flat, colorless sky--the shapely clouds are like an enormous protective blanket, and beyond them, you know, is the dazzling infinite, the blue and gold, and eventually the diamond-studded universe, and that someday you'll be ready for that revelation but today you are only supposed to feel pretty good and have a cup of tea. Then coming upon the crest of a hill I saw very suddenly spread before me the expanse of the grand & stately cemetery that begins its huge sprawl not far from my apartment--I never see it, though, because I usually take a different route home--and it took my breath away, with its green slopes and its scattering of tombs like dull jewels. And also a cemetery feels immense, but not always morbid: at that moment I was flooded with exquisite life, and also Van Morrison came on with "Gloria," which is just great, so I capered home through all the wet trees and thought it would be nice if when I got home some old friend were sitting on my front steps so I could take them in and show them my sweet apartment and make them some hot drink, but no one was there so I merely entertained myself.

Well, kittens, it hasn't been quite a year. So keep your socks on, or whatever.

My neighbors downstairs are arguing and it's 2:30 AM and I can't get this thing written that I need to write. Fuck and fuck again.