*looks around furtively and posts*
Had to post this, after reading it on rian_219's LJ - and it's from the Sydney Morning Herald. Can't think of anyone I know who would come close to this person's dilemma.. *cough, chokes, dies*
My sad little fetish
I read somewhere that everybody hits rock bottom some time during their life. I'm not necessarily talking about the Junkie-in-the-Gutter-Selling-Myself-on-William-St kind of rock bottom, nor the Ravaged-Third-World-flyblown-wish-Angelina-Jolie-would-stop-visiting-our-village-with-television-crews-and-just-fly-us-out-of-here rock bottom, either.
I'm talking about the Middle-Class-Existential-Boredom rock bottom, the ennui that makes one slump in the desk chair, unable to work up the energy to schlep to the staff kitchen for a ninth mug of lukewarm tea. The kind of rock bottom Woody Allen makes movies about.
I realised I hit that particular rock bottom recently, when I was informed by a colleague that my favourite pastime had become a sad little fetish. "Alexa,'' she informed me, "your favourite pastime has become a sad little fetish''.
My problem, you see, is online abuse. Internet addiction. The cyber that is crack. Although 70 per cent of adult web sites are accessed between the hours of 9am and 5pm, my carnality is more hidebound than hot.
If one tedious Tuesday afternoon, you sneak up behind my desk, you'll see me faux-casually reaching for my mouse to enlarge a browser window. But beneath the NSW Government website I've just brought up isn't an oiled man, also enlarged, wearing only an insouciant sneer.
More likely, I'm hiding a John Fluevog shoe in erotic lime suede, magnified to 1147 by 770 pixels so I can peer into every moist crease and cranny. Just as exciting are brown Camper Gaucho boots, which never fail to draw from me a phwoooar, once I manage to navigate through the site's aggravating Flash graphics. (Trust me, they'd be perfect with a floral frock or man-style three-quarter pants. The boots, not the graphics). Now that's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.
But shoes are only my foreplay. As a compulsive knitter, my favourite online orgasm is yarn. Yarn! I can't get enough of the stuff. Handpainted merino, cashmere, a fancy blend of the two called cashmerino, alpaca, angora, mohair, cotton mixes, bamboo and silk and linen, in raspberry pinks, olive greens, rich turquoise with peacock blue slubs. Sigh. I can stare at close close-ups of yarn for hours, like a teenage boy slavering over a copy of Hustler.
When I'm satiated with yarn, there are blogs about my favourite topics. The voyeur in me loves to see what people in Amsterdam, America and Hungary are knitting. Or writing. Or sewing. Or cooking. Or painting. Or wearing on their feet.
When I feel like I need a shot of schadenfreude, I visit Gofugyourself where two brilliant LA bitches verbally slap multimillionaire celebrities who dress like bag ladies. Jesus, I can dress better than that. And on a really low energy afternoon, what always lifts me are cute blogs. I'll coo over friends' baby blogs. Or anyone's baby blogs. Or Cute Overload, with dozens of pictures of puppies, kittens, chicks, ferrets and itty-bitty lizards in obscenely adorable poses.
Today, I had to lie under my desk with a wet cloth on my forehead for forty minutes, when the aforementioned colleague informed me that some companies only allow their employees limited web access. (This was just before she informed me my favourite pastime had become a sad little fetish.)
Pardon my naivety, but I did not know this! Some poor creatures - obviously not reading this - have such limited access, they can't even trawl the news! And no yarn! Or puppy pictures! Or baby snaps! Or shoes! Oy vey. Don't these companies understand that dreaming is necessary to creativity? Nay, to staff productivity? Do they have blackened bitumen for hearts?
It was only when I stood up and addressed the office, sharing my thoughts with everyone within a nine-desk radius including the balding guy who never speaks, that I suddenly understood I sounded like Hitler during the Nuremberg rallies. I trailed off. It was patently clear to everyone, including the balding guy who never took his eyes off his computer screen, that I have no life. Or at least, I have a life the highlight of which is getting stimulated by photos of wool. `Nice to meet you, rock bottom. You don't do gin and tonics? Just misery, monotony and mild humiliation? Damn, I'll have to get back to you on that.'
Just then, an email from the colleague silently slipped into my inbox, with one line: http://www.netaddiction.com/
Thank God there are internet sites for this sort of thing.
- Posted by Alexa Moses
March 8, 2006 05:23 PM
And she had this link too which has been amusing to wander into...
My sad little fetish
I read somewhere that everybody hits rock bottom some time during their life. I'm not necessarily talking about the Junkie-in-the-Gutter-Selling-Myself-on-William-St kind of rock bottom, nor the Ravaged-Third-World-flyblown-wish-Angelina-Jolie-would-stop-visiting-our-village-with-television-crews-and-just-fly-us-out-of-here rock bottom, either.
I'm talking about the Middle-Class-Existential-Boredom rock bottom, the ennui that makes one slump in the desk chair, unable to work up the energy to schlep to the staff kitchen for a ninth mug of lukewarm tea. The kind of rock bottom Woody Allen makes movies about.
I realised I hit that particular rock bottom recently, when I was informed by a colleague that my favourite pastime had become a sad little fetish. "Alexa,'' she informed me, "your favourite pastime has become a sad little fetish''.
My problem, you see, is online abuse. Internet addiction. The cyber that is crack. Although 70 per cent of adult web sites are accessed between the hours of 9am and 5pm, my carnality is more hidebound than hot.
If one tedious Tuesday afternoon, you sneak up behind my desk, you'll see me faux-casually reaching for my mouse to enlarge a browser window. But beneath the NSW Government website I've just brought up isn't an oiled man, also enlarged, wearing only an insouciant sneer.
More likely, I'm hiding a John Fluevog shoe in erotic lime suede, magnified to 1147 by 770 pixels so I can peer into every moist crease and cranny. Just as exciting are brown Camper Gaucho boots, which never fail to draw from me a phwoooar, once I manage to navigate through the site's aggravating Flash graphics. (Trust me, they'd be perfect with a floral frock or man-style three-quarter pants. The boots, not the graphics). Now that's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.
But shoes are only my foreplay. As a compulsive knitter, my favourite online orgasm is yarn. Yarn! I can't get enough of the stuff. Handpainted merino, cashmere, a fancy blend of the two called cashmerino, alpaca, angora, mohair, cotton mixes, bamboo and silk and linen, in raspberry pinks, olive greens, rich turquoise with peacock blue slubs. Sigh. I can stare at close close-ups of yarn for hours, like a teenage boy slavering over a copy of Hustler.
When I'm satiated with yarn, there are blogs about my favourite topics. The voyeur in me loves to see what people in Amsterdam, America and Hungary are knitting. Or writing. Or sewing. Or cooking. Or painting. Or wearing on their feet.
When I feel like I need a shot of schadenfreude, I visit Gofugyourself where two brilliant LA bitches verbally slap multimillionaire celebrities who dress like bag ladies. Jesus, I can dress better than that. And on a really low energy afternoon, what always lifts me are cute blogs. I'll coo over friends' baby blogs. Or anyone's baby blogs. Or Cute Overload, with dozens of pictures of puppies, kittens, chicks, ferrets and itty-bitty lizards in obscenely adorable poses.
Today, I had to lie under my desk with a wet cloth on my forehead for forty minutes, when the aforementioned colleague informed me that some companies only allow their employees limited web access. (This was just before she informed me my favourite pastime had become a sad little fetish.)
Pardon my naivety, but I did not know this! Some poor creatures - obviously not reading this - have such limited access, they can't even trawl the news! And no yarn! Or puppy pictures! Or baby snaps! Or shoes! Oy vey. Don't these companies understand that dreaming is necessary to creativity? Nay, to staff productivity? Do they have blackened bitumen for hearts?
It was only when I stood up and addressed the office, sharing my thoughts with everyone within a nine-desk radius including the balding guy who never speaks, that I suddenly understood I sounded like Hitler during the Nuremberg rallies. I trailed off. It was patently clear to everyone, including the balding guy who never took his eyes off his computer screen, that I have no life. Or at least, I have a life the highlight of which is getting stimulated by photos of wool. `Nice to meet you, rock bottom. You don't do gin and tonics? Just misery, monotony and mild humiliation? Damn, I'll have to get back to you on that.'
Just then, an email from the colleague silently slipped into my inbox, with one line: http://www.netaddiction.com/
Thank God there are internet sites for this sort of thing.
- Posted by Alexa Moses
March 8, 2006 05:23 PM
And she had this link too which has been amusing to wander into...