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Swelter: To Be Uncomfortably Hot

This orig­i­nally appeared on mis​ter​agye​man​.blogspot​.com on October 23, 2015.

How about that sun, eh?

It turns out I have sweat glands. It’s always nice to meet new people, I say. But I wish I could have made their acquain­tance under dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. 2015 is likely to be the hottest year on record, appar­ently. Global warm­ing — we read about it, saw the movie, and now it has come ‘to a the­atre near you!’

Uncomfortably near. My favourite shirt now smells like the work­ing gear of a lumberjack.

Apologies to lum­ber­jacks; they work hard for their aroma. My funk is the mild, under­achiev­ing essence of a egghead. While brain-stink is by no means infe­rior to brawn-stench, it has less charm to it. Females are unable to resist the musky aura of the work­ing man, but this they can take or leave well alone. And gen­er­ally, they choose Option B.

Did you know you can work on your laptop while lying prone on the ground? I have a chin-cush­ion for this pur­pose. I invented it by taking one of those use­less sofa cush­ions and stick­ing it under my chin. The chin-cush­ion comes in handy now because I am learn­ing web design. Again. Third time’s the charm, they say.

It is nice that we value the opin­ion of a two-time fail­ure, as the author of that apho­rism evi­dently was. It shows how tol­er­ant we are as a civilization.

This is a weird writ­ing voice. I think it’s because I just read Gweenbrick.

Anyway. I am learn­ing HTML and CSS and JS and PHP. I use all these abbre­vi­a­tions non-iron­i­cally now, at least 20 times a day. I also haunt forums, and often report spam­mers. I’m all busi­ness. This may actu­ally be the first lan­guage I’ve learned the cor­rect way. You know — if every lan­guage was as well-doc­u­mented as pro­gram­ming lan­guages are, there’d be no more war. Also I would be quite grate­ful for a manual on non-verbal communication.

Part of the wonder of learn­ing code is, for the first time I know just how out­dated and lazy I have been. I am finally learn­ing fast enough to under­stand how slow I am actu­ally pro­gress­ing. That sen­tence is sup­ported by sci­ence: the intel­li­gence it takes to be good at some­thing is roughly equal to the intel­li­gence it takes to know that you suck at said some­thing. Unto which knowl­edge I have finally attained. Which is why I now read my Jobberman updates.

You know what they say: some do; some get paid to.

It’s true because it rhymes.

I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would pine for a 9‑to‑5. Actually, I’m not; my Scrabble sies­tas are leg­endary. However, even I must admit that it would be nice to have a super­vi­sor again. Middle-level exec­u­tives are plagued by a fear that you are dumber than you let on, so they can’t afford to test your capac­ity. Stolen waters are sweet, yea — and stolen naps are nectar.

Will you hire me? I have skills.

I’m not sure why I finally man­aged to do a post — and one so full of painfully blog­gish drivel — after pos­si­bly a full dozen panics. The Blogger post text-box is 33.33% larger than that of WordPress, did you know? When you are totally dis­in­ter­ested in writ­ing (and also mod­er­ately bereft of ideas) you notice such things.

Well, good­bye. If there is another post it shall be a story. It shall involve a quirky English name, it shall. And shall revolve around an innocu­ous food item, as all my sto­ries now do. Oh yes.