look how the gods have afflicted me
Jan. 2nd, 2003 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incandescensAnd New Year's Day passes with something of a whimper, with nothing particular happening, except a constant greyness of rain outside -- did I once comment in my lj here that I liked the sound of rain? What idiocy -- and my father tackling the wooden dragon that I got him for Christmas. I think he managed to assemble it before calling it a night. Go him. (It's a very Chinese dragon, horns and whiskers and all.)
I have a bad habit while looking at story summaries on ff.net -- when you get to the sort of summary that has meaningful questions in it, such as "Will X finally find true happiness? Can Y rescue them?" I tend to react by muttering, "No! They all die! Horribly! Howwibly howwibly!"
Of course, if I were really genuinely ashamed of this habit, I wouldn't mention it here. It's like the people who used to approach a hypnotist/stage magician I know (Martin Taylor by name) and say, "I bet you can't hypnotise me against my will, huh? Try and make me do (X)! I dare you!" He would point out (in the speech he usually gave as preamble to his act) that if the people really _genuinely_ didn't want to be hypnotised into doing X, they wouldn't be daring him to make them do it. (And if a person actually didn't want him to do something, it would be unethical of him to hypnotise them and make them do it. This was, he would end, why he honestly didn't know whether it was possible to hypnotise someone to do something against their will -- he'd never tried.)
My last few days of holiday are running out far too quickly. You will find me snivelling in the corner.
When not working on chronologies, that is. :)
---
I think I am in love with A. E. Housman,
Which puts me in a worse than usual fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman
And he's been dead since 1936.
-- Wendy Cope
I have a bad habit while looking at story summaries on ff.net -- when you get to the sort of summary that has meaningful questions in it, such as "Will X finally find true happiness? Can Y rescue them?" I tend to react by muttering, "No! They all die! Horribly! Howwibly howwibly!"
Of course, if I were really genuinely ashamed of this habit, I wouldn't mention it here. It's like the people who used to approach a hypnotist/stage magician I know (Martin Taylor by name) and say, "I bet you can't hypnotise me against my will, huh? Try and make me do (X)! I dare you!" He would point out (in the speech he usually gave as preamble to his act) that if the people really _genuinely_ didn't want to be hypnotised into doing X, they wouldn't be daring him to make them do it. (And if a person actually didn't want him to do something, it would be unethical of him to hypnotise them and make them do it. This was, he would end, why he honestly didn't know whether it was possible to hypnotise someone to do something against their will -- he'd never tried.)
My last few days of holiday are running out far too quickly. You will find me snivelling in the corner.
When not working on chronologies, that is. :)
---
I think I am in love with A. E. Housman,
Which puts me in a worse than usual fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman
And he's been dead since 1936.
-- Wendy Cope
no subject
Date: 2003-01-01 05:04 pm (UTC)-mjj
no subject
Date: 2003-01-01 05:06 pm (UTC)FF.net
Date: 2003-01-01 07:21 pm (UTC)