White Noise

yesterday was as weird as i might have imagined, although not nearly as traumatic. i went and said hi to a handful of people, but mostly kept to myself off in a corner. it was kind of impossible to make small talk with anyone – nobody felt like nattering on about stupid little things. a lot of the people there were, as predicted, very upset. i ducked out before the reception, even though there were several people i had not said hi to… it just seemed like it would be another hour or so of uncomfortable attempts at conversation.

in other news, i finished reading “the mustache”, which is a book a bought a year or so before going to London. i started reading it on the plane, got about fifty pages in, put it down, and never looked back. it’s sort of felt like an albatross around my neck ever since – up to that point, i had never stopped reading a perfectly interesting book, and the only book i had put down because i *didn’t* like it was a tom clancy book. (now i’ve added to _that_ list with the illuminati trilogy…)

it was, fortunately, a book worth reading. i’m glad, though, that i can take it off my “unread books” shelf. next in line is White Noise, which i read two-thirds of and put down, also on the plane to London. after that is Great Expectations, which i had been listening to on audiobook for a while. i made it through the first “book” of that one, then put it down. This was about a year ago, i think.

White Noise

Beau and I had a discussion about how people these days tend to feel completely alienated from their jobs. You do work on one end but never see any concrete reason why you should have done that work. Most people consider their jobs something they “have to do”, something separate from their lives. The thought of such a thing frightens me… why devote 75% of my life to something that means nothing to me just so I can make enough money to have a roof over my head and food to eat?

…Speaking of alienation, there was recently an episode of Malcolm in the Middle on TV that was kind of similar to the last part I read of White Noise… three years ago, was it now? And on top of that, Vince and I watched Office Space on Friday, and it was a better movie to me now because I finally can relate to some of the stuff that happens… These things are random, but it seems like that’s the state of my life right now. Alienated.

Sigh.