2:41 p.m. - 2004-06-09
an open letter to one Patrick James Filipiak
Dear Everyone, this is about and mostly directed toward Patrick. He knows why. So does Sarah, and maybe Kevin if he reads...anyway. Patrick is very smart. Yes, very smart in deed and indeed. He is a good social workerish person, however, Good Works is slowly killing him. Kind of like how Azkaban prisoners have the soul drained out of them slowly by the dementors...only not quite so severe. More realistically, I believe Good Works has a sort of diminishing returns principal to it, but I don't really know alot about physics theory or wherever the idea of diminishing returns came from. ANYway, Patrick recently returned from a trip. If he was slightly less pretentious in his non-pretentiousness, he would have a blog like any normal (easy now, non-bloggers...) person who has far-away friends and something to say....and in that blog, he would tell us about his trip. Maybe he might have even kept a travel-log and transcribed it into his web log for our enjoyment. For tips on hilarious travel logs, see Mae Klingler, or (upon recommendation, not personal experience) Jessica Meyer, Katie Meyer's brilliant story-telling sister.
Patrick, I know you are resisting the urge to have a web log. Just get one. It's like trying to resist...I don't know...Bryan Adams songs....on the surface, they seem really horrible, but you ALL sing along to them, don't you? I do. Especially in the car....though I will admit to putting the window up when this happens...but wait. This is not about me or Bryan Adams; this is about Pat-rick. Actually I very much prefer the traditional Patch-rick pronounciation.
Patrick has commented on this particular blog being somehow not community-minded enough. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but if what you mean is that it's not socially minded enough...I'm working on figuring out how to put hyper links into my text so that you can all immediately beam yourselves straight to such social justice oriented web sites as DATA, ACLU, Amnesty Internation, World Vision, Relevant Magazine, and other friendly bloggers blogs, such as Brooke WIlliams. And by working on it I mean that I've been helplessly mentioning it to people who know more about this like this than I do, and imagine some ambitious person, like Bob, for example (ahem) might explore the diaryland web site, which I am now a GOLD member of and figure out how to perform said task.
Now, if you mean more community minded in regard to your urging others to refrain from making cultural references that some people don't understand....no way. It's like in french class....when you're in your third or fourth year, you barely know as much as a french two year old, but the general consensus of the french teaching population seems to be that speaking to you entirely in french will magically propell you toward language proficiency. As a non-french teacher, I balk at this theory, and never found it to be particularly helpful..I speak about 29 french words, this is the sum total of five years of french taking...grr...however, those students who persevered through 100 level college courses actually speak french. See Liz Cooke, Kelly Cooke and other cooke family members currently living in Paris.
Anyway, with cultural stuff, and I'm not even sure exactly what we're talking about here...considering I am hardly the most culturally aware person around...that would be a tie between Brooke WIlliams and Ben Cape....maybe you're talking more about Seattle stuff. Are you? Perhaps you could email me and be more specific, as this is likely boring for everyone else.
Sorry if this is boring for people not named Patrick.
Thanks for calling the other night. Sorry I wasn't available. The damned time change thing is so annoying. Anyway, please know that you are missed and well liked by me. You are my favorite co-worker of all time. Holly, if you're reading this, you don't count, because we didn't actually WORK together....actually, did either of us work much at all...Anyway PJF, Perhaps all you are really getting at is that we need to chat. We do. It's been ages. In the meantime, don't be so pissy about my web log. Get your own. With sisterly love as always....moi.
