Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Metadiscourse, honest and useful as it may often appear, is sometimes unseemly in the way it so handily ruins the magic. This begs the question, naturally, of whether we even had enough magic, enough fiery chemistry, to allow for such deterioration, and I’ll leave that appraisal to you.

Our conversations usually materialize during the day. Perhaps I’ll be driving. Snacking. Walking. Trying to solve the age-old problem of fitting a corpse into a single Hefty bag without drawstrings, when an urgent topic comes to mind that I simply must share with you. I quickly hide it in the deep furrows of my brain reserved for my most secret hopes and worst lottery numbers.

When the clock registers 11 PM or so, I’ll be organizing my spice rack and categorizing my pocket lint vigorously. A nagging feeling will hit, but why? Oh, right. That. This will prompt a rush to court the perennially broken mistress in one window and ready my safety net in another.

I suppose that’s the main thrust of tonight’s chat. OpenOffice is up to 2.0 Beta 2, and certainly it’s cause for frugal nerds everywhere to rejoice in MP3 format. This is basically the most professional suite of free office tools available, which is a definite boon for people who, uh, traditionally found Microsoft Office and gave it a home. The way things used to work, no one ever bought Office, least of all in college, and Microsoft was obligated to let us use their software without compensation. This was the unwritten rule. I guess at some point Bill Gates decided to stop bending over his Aeron chair and instead demanded we validate–or even buy–our software. The nerve.