Daily Office: Friday
¶ Matins: One of these days, I’ll figure out how to write about the state change that overcomes a regular business company when it becomes what we loosely call “a big corporation.” Everybody knows that such a change occurs, but the law is ignorant of it. In any case, that day has not arrived; I am still in the preliminary rant phase.
¶ Tierce: WTF? Clyde Haberman works an entire column, today, out of the refusal of the Miss Grundys at The New York Times to print the word “fuck,” on the grounds, no doubt, that it is unfit.
¶ Nones: I guess it’s raining only in New York. They say it never stops raining in Seattle, but Karcher lucked out with a clear day for taking photographs of its Space-Needle cleaning project. Caution: do review these images within half an hour of lunch. (via Kottke. org)
Oremus…
§ Matins. I’ve got a great couple of clips from Aliens, with Sigourney Weaver in that forklift/loader in the final showdown with Mama. Everybody’s rooting for Ripley, of course, but I’m going to ask you to imagine that, instead of being used to rid the world of vermin, the loader went after you. The loader, like a corporation, has no will of its own; it is operated by a guy just like you. Except of course that he’s in the loader.
This is really what big corporations are all about: giving guys — usually taller-than-average guys — loaders to play with during their workday. One per corporation! Up until the state change that I referred to above, a business is in business to do business: to make things, sell things, ship things, and even to take things apart. After the state change, a corporation continues in all those endeavors while saddled with an Executive Suite that plays polo with company assets. The object of the game is not to do business but to increase market share — which only looks like doing business.
If you’re in the mood for a more amusing rant, here’s Jason Kottke on subway etiquette. I second all his motions.
§ Tierce. As indeed it once was, and as indeed it no longer is. Managing editors who wonder about declining circulation may fasten their attention on the irritating bit of prudery that “prevents” the newspaper from quoting, say, the Vice President of the United States of America on the Senate floor. What young person wouldn’t wonder about the Times’s intended demographic, before giving the paper a pass.
At first, I wondered if Mr Haberman were aiming his column at the editors. Silly me! Without the prohibition, he would have had to find something else to write about. Pointing to the epithet that he couldn’t use used up a good fifteen percent of his space. You might say that the Times wrote his column for him.
§ Nones. What a lovely day it would be to stay in and read! But I’ve been out in it all day, getting soaked, drying off, and getting soaked again. The rain isn’t heavy, but it’s persistent — and it’s wet. (That’s to say that it’s not drizzle.)
At this time of year, though, rain makes New York look terrific — dreamy and romantic and just a little bit melancholy. I’m going to put on Bach’s b-minor Mass, which probably sounds depressing, if you don’t know the music. There is something about the combination of this work, spring weather and wet, reflective pavement that takes me back to being fifteen faster than any pop song. When I was fifteen, I wanted to grow up to live in a movie by Ingmar Bergman — an ambition that I would not relinquish until I actually saw one.
Just last Sunday, a sunny day if a slightly cool one, Kathleen and I took a cab straight down Second Avenue to Houston Street, getting out a block or so away from that intersection. Today, standing on the opposite side of Houston, I peered up into Second Avenue; I’d never realized how the avenue bends slightly just before it melts away into lower Manhattan’s great crosstown artery. Without expected to see it, I glimpsed the very top of the Empire State Building, half-invisible in the cloudy weather. Well, the very top of what hadn’t completely slipped into the ceiling. From mid-Manhattan down to City Hall, the Empire State Building is Manhattan’s Mount Fuji, popping into view when one least expects it.