Saturday I went for a walk that involved 400 stairs--200 up and 200 down (the same ones). Sunday, after Barbie's party, I had a smoke hangover and did nothing. Is this real phenomenon or a figment of my oversensitive nose and egocentric imagination? Or is it only because I almost never stay up until 2? Friday and Monday I used the Nordic Track: Friday for 20 minutes & something over two miles and Monday for 30 minutes & 3.3 miles. Perversely, it's much easier for me to exercise in the winter because it has to be inside and I am so conscious of not going outside. In the summer, I swim and bike-commute and walk and rollerblade, but except for occasionally on my bike I don't push my aerobic capacity much. Just being outside is healthy and burns calories, right? Nordic Tracking, Life-Stepping, and step-aerobicking are much harder work-outs than bike commuting or swimming or rollerblading. And skiing, oof, if torture counts as exercise. So tonight I'm going to step. And doing laundry. And taking the last of my Amazon links off, to make myself officially non-commercial. And link to someone else's page of Gregory Corso's "Marriage" to explain the origins of our domain name, penguin dust. More on that below.
Friday I responded to being likened to Heather in "The Blair Witch Project" with my usual articulate exclamation of "Jesus fucking Christ" and mentioned that that was the second time in as many days that exclamation was my first best and only reaction to a topic. The previous day's ejaculation had been prompted by an innocent search of the Diary Registry for on-line journals in Colorado. Lemonbugg is not registered, but Slappyjack is. A few OLJs seem obviously abandoned or otherwise nonfunctional. Another is not. It is called Penguin Dust and it's located in Denver, Colorado. Well, I don't want to call my journal anything but Speaking Confidentially, since that's mine; Penguin Dust is RDC's and mine. He likes the Cowboy Junkies, which is good, but the Gregory Corso line we share:
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--
I just find it ironic that in the past few months when I haven't checked the Diary Registry but have been discussing with the spouseling the pros and cons of our own domain, we chose a domain name that another escribitionist in the same town uses as a title--and considering the bulk of penguindust.com's content is mine, and the bulk of my content is Speaking Confidentially, well then it's all ironic. Don't you think.
Which is, speaking of other recent references, also the means by which I finally blew to hell Shelley's inital impression of me as a tight-ass little prude (her phrase, not mine, as I think is obvious). I wrote, fast and furious in the minutes of discovery, a message in which I used some variant of "fuck" 28 times. (She counted.) It was a protracted version of Beth's title recently. I was (and am) not angry at Marcie, writer of Penguin Dust. I had fun swearing, but I was only flabbergasted, not furious--just furiously (over)reacting.
The premise of Forbidden Knowledge which yes I am still slogging through, carefully and taking notes for the first time in five years, is that humans have an innate desire to know, to discover, to plumb, to invent, to innovate. This gets us into trouble, vis. the apple that started it all and the bomb that could end it all and everything in between. I mentioned this to my Überboss, all enthusiastic about my new book (this was a couple of weeks ago) and even more pleased he had heard of the title, which made it more credible in my self-doubting eyes, and he, a former college professor, was dubious that this is a universal desire. Isn't it? Are we not born with it? I would rather believe that it's socialized out of us by others who earlier were socialized out of it than that it's not in our genes.
Oh, and the coworker who likened me to Heather Friday was totalling backpedaling today--I remind her of the actress, not the character (a fine line, depending on how much of the hooey you believe).
And today's title, since I got distracted from my first sentence, which was about exercise, is my goal for the winter. Going to step today will be the first time since once in September which was the first time since once in June which was the first time since my knee gave out in April. It's winter now. It is nearly the fourth anniversary of my starting at Hateful, Inc., and four years is a long time for me to go without a dramatic weight loss, since my tendency is to gain volume over time and drastically, quickly, lose it. Going off the pill helped twice, going off the pill the second time combined with depression helped, and hating my job with its lovely gym helped. 1989, 1991, 1995. Now 1999.
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Last modified 2 November 1999
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