Hitting the ground wearing a jet-pack!

Last night's despeckle of the job due first thing this morning revealed that I had completely missed one small document, so chalk up another victory for quality assurance. It didn't take me long to fix the problem and send off the job.

This morning's despeckle was pretty harrowing, mostly because Word decided to take its sweet time doing just about everything, but in the end, I managed to get the job sent to the client as well.

Three small jobs came in with the morning's email, one of which I turned around PDQ and another of which I had already done earlier in the month. Then a fourth job came in, so the work plate now has a healthy heft to it, and March is starting to look a heck of a lot better than it did a week ago.

I finished off John D. MacDonald's The Quick Red Fox, which I had begun to read at odd moments during the weekend (such as when waiting for Word to recover from a "stopped working, will recover" errors). If I read it before, it had been sufficiently long ago for me to have forgotten the entire story. Although I was in my normal "speed-read" mode (I've been known to finish novels in the time between buying the book on the secure side of airport security and wheels-up, without the aid of any delay), I still managed to dog-ear the page with the following observation:

You see, Virginia, there really is a Santa Rosita, full of plastic people, in plastic houses, in areas noduled by the vast basketry of their shopping centers. But do not blame them for being so tiresome and so utterly satisfied with themselves. Because, you see, there is no one left to tell them what they are and what they really should be doing.

The dullest wire services the world has ever seen fill their little monopoly newspapers with self-congratulatory pap. Their radio is unspeakable. Their television is geared to a minimal approval by thirty million of them. And anything thirty million people like, aside from their more private functions, is bound to be bad. Their schools are group-adjustment centers, fashioned to shame the rebellious. Their churches are weekly votes of confidence in God. Their politicians are enormously likable, never saying a cross word. The goods they buy grow increasingly more shoddy every year, though brighter in color. For those who still read, they make do, for the most part, with the portentous gruntings of Uris, Wouk, Rand, and others of that same witless ilk. Their magazine fare is fashioned by nervous committees.

You see, dear, there is no one left to ask them a single troublesome question. Such as: Where have you been and where are you going and is it worth it?

Plus ça change...

License notwithstanding, it is a troublesome—and vital—set of questions, indeed.

Cheers...