by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/20 14:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/01/20/7175272.aspx
Nothing technical in this navel-gazing worthless post, whatsoever....
So I have been unable to RAS in all weekend due to some random policy change on the RAS servers that Helpdesk wants to blame on my home network even though I get the same error when I test from inside the corporate network. I think they escalated out of spite after I did most of their script for them.
Luckily there is OWA, and RPC over HTTP, so I'll have no problem getting to my mail when I am out, and they'll possibly have it fixed by the time I get back.
I did have a few files I wanted to copy up to the machine in my office but my quick trip in let me take care of that, and I even had time to stick a book in someone's drawer that they had wanted to borrow (looking to understand a Julia/Bran reference I made last week, and only the book could really explain it; I have another copy anyway, since I am used to losing books and never getting them back).
Playing right now is Into Dust from Mazzy Star's 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See. Although bereft of the context of the music they are nearly useless, the lyrics go something like this:
Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
Around broken in two
'til your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
'til my hands shook with the weight of fear
I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your fate
Under your fate
It was you breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust
FYI -- Most lyrics sites have the words to this song wrong. I don't think I do.
Into Dust gets a lot of random play on the television during sad moments as the Wikipedia article about the band points out here, so you may have heard it before on House or Moonlight or Charmed or The O.C. (if not, or if you aren't sure, then you can listen to it on YouTube here or better yet here or the O.C.'ish duet version with extra instrumentals (an extended cover of the song by Ashtar Command) with video here or here.
Of course I associate the song with someone, one of those woulda been, coulda been, bordering on but not quite hitting shoulda been romances that fell victim to the circumstances I talked about in that MS and new relationships blog from before. Though if you watch The O.C.-based videos, try to keep in mind that I was significantly less attractive than Benjamin McKenzie (possibly even less so now?) and she was significantly more attractive than Mischa Barton (possibly even moreso now?) -- no matter how improbable people may find that....
Wasn't it James Bond who suggested (to Vesper) in the book Casino Royale that most couples don't add two people together; instead, they subtract one from the other? What ended up happening was I suppose something in that range. It could have probably been predicted -- for engineers it usually boils down to the math, anyway.
This is one of those songs that if I had an ounce of sense in my head I'd have on no playlist -- nine minutes and four seconds of thinking about stuff that rightfully belongs in a box taped up and put into storage in a basement in a city I never visit anymore.
The alternate title to this post is a play on words of the text (Some features may not be available in this conversation) that appears at the top of an IM window opened by Windows Live Messenger chatting to a client using Office Communicator, a very common state of affairs for someone such as myself who works at Microsoft yet who avoids Office Communicator as one would avoid viral plague might see. I kinda realized that the words kind of fit.
I don't want to idealize the whole thing too much, though. If one idealizes relationships that failed, bad things happen. Like the kind of nonsense that causes guys to get really drunk and call up their ex-girlfriends from five years prior when a relationship ends (with someone who won't be eligible to be called this way for five years!). When all said and done, it was just a relationship that is long gone and that technically never got to be anyway.
One of life's real cruelties, to be sure, but compared to (as Spike might ask), like, earthquakes in the Far East or testicular cancer? Not too terribly impressive of a showing if you know what I mean.
Probably time to take the Mazzy Star song off the playlist entirely, rather than "upgrading" it to the Ashtar Command version. Memories really ought to stay in the past from whence the came an not the future where they never dare to go....
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