From: mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Soc.motss: The Color Version
Date: 6 Jan 93 17:33:24 GMT
Organization: (getting there)


steven@cray.com (Steven Levine) describes motssish events, most of
which I was part of.  It seems to call for some sort of answer-- or
at least an acknowledgment.  So, Cobra Woman here.  We read you.
 
 >Try to imagine the number of preparatory email messages that
 >made this possible, and you will know why I (and presumably many others)
 >are just a wee bit behind schedule at work.
It helps not to have a schedule.  (Oh, yes:  the bookcases are
scheduled for delivery on Monday.  Thought you'd all be fascinated
to know that.)  But I did just delete a fairly big file from my
mail directory called xmas.  It was well over 50K.

 >Part 1:  A Date with Timmy
 >[ ... ]   This is not
 >a complacent man, but who wants complacency in their friends?
Not in any way to slight the energetic Mr. Pierce, whose voice I
managed to hear on my answering machine at least, but is there no
middle ground between complacency and Tim's type of energy?  Which
reminds me that Steven is incredibly high-energy himself.  He said
last year that he was so tired he was uncharacteristically
slow-moving.  I didn't fully process the implications of that at
the time.  If Tim shows sparks enough to make Steven comment, I must
say I'm awed...
 
 >[ ... ] Tim, for example,
 >said that he expected me to be -- get this -- shy.
Well, yes.  I'd have adored being there to watch this one get
dispelled.

 >I think of Steve Dyer's comment to me when we finally met, after copious
 >e-correspondence:  "You're just like your posts, only much faster." 
 >He was referring, presumably, to my speech.
I'm not sure that's all it was.  It's the rate of brain activity,
more likely.  I'd like to study the data structure that Steven uses
to access conversational topics.  I could make a serious study of
it, but that (of course) would require spending hours and hours in
conversation with Steven.  Hmmm, I wonder if I could get a grant...

 >Part 2:  Dinner with Mara and Marty
 >Was this a motss event?  No, it was just friends having dinner.
 >Never mind.
Heh.  Discretion, and all that.  You can come back.

 >Observation #6:  You really can become friends with people through
 >                 correspondence alone.
Oh, yes, indeed you can.  


 >Part 3:  LEAGUE/South Jersey Eats Pizza
 >My mother came with me to the motss.lunch in New Jersey.
Steven's mother is quite a person.  She'd just opened her home to
fourteen strangers in order to provide some help to people whose
home-- a boat-- was sunk in the storm two weeks earlier.  She was
apologetic about what she considered the disorder of the house.
I couldn't find the disorder, but I'm one of those chaotic types.

 >Mara took a train from New York to attend this lunch -- I feared she
 >would have a bit of Steven overkill, but she didn't seem to mind.
It doesn't happen very often.  ;-)
 >She even spent some time in my parents' house, where she was subjected
 >to childhood pictures.  An extremely polite woman, that Mara.
Now, I gotta appeal to Steve Dyer on this one:  Steve, you know what
photos of Steven's family look like, right?  Was I being polite?
(she asks, inconspicuously wiping the drool off her chin).

 >We went to our table and I sat at the end, making some comment
 >about sitting in the "birthday boy" seat.  Someone said that it
 >could be my conceptual birthday, and my mother immediately pointed
 >out that she, of all people, would know the most about my conceptual
 >birthday (though I realize now that she couldn't possible know about
 >the soc.motss conceptual family).  What my mother and I knew but
 >probably did not make clear to the others is that December 29 is
 >pretty much the right date for such a celebration, as I was born at
 >the end of a September.
It was about as clear as it could have been, short of reading her
diaries.

 >Observation #8:  We probably have too many private jokes.  Does
 >                 that make us a community?  A subculture?  Or
 >                 a bunch of obnoxious twits?
Or (dare I say it) a cabal?  Naw.  No sech of a thing.

 >Part 4:  Cobra Woman and Company
(Hey, this isn't the Maria Montez thread, is it?)

 >Observation #10:  Nervous about the impression you are making?
 >                  Brazen it out.  Assume people will like you.
 >                  Even if this doesn't work, you won't know it. 
At least not if they're moderately polite.

 >[ ... ]
 >strangers wink at Greg Parkinson on a regular basis.  ("It's
 >because I'm a 'type'," he explains, dismissively.)
Yeah, well.  And you know you can trust Greg, because he works for a
bank, right?

 >And soc.motss is not as good at encouraging smiles and laughter
 >and companionable joviality as dinner.
Not yet, but just wait till the next generation of computers comes
along.


Cobra Woman 
-- 

  Mara Chibnik
  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.