stakebait | an uneventful day

Found out the city has gyms for $75 per year -- beats the heck out of $79 per month with corporate discount. (which might allow me to pay for a trainer if the madness continues). Must go see, but sounds promising. No yacht, though.

House now half-way clean for Slag Heap-attending out of town visitors, by my not-very-rigorous standards. If they came now, they would probably not flee. Tonight, there shall be vacuuming. (Not so favorable review of the play in the NY Times today, BTW, but they had some nice things to say about Vinnie K.)

Just picked up a book by a new-to-me author at lunchtime -- John Brosnan's Mothership. Came back to desk, hit refresh, found out from

officialgaiman that Brosnan has passed away. I do not like creepy coincidences, Sam I am.

Re: that discussion of LJ etiquette that is making the rounds -- I will try hard to remember and honor people's expressed preferences in their journals, but since it seems entirely reasonable to me to stop and disagree with strangers (politely) in any instance where it would be appropriate to stop and agree with strangers (politely) I may slip up sometimes.

As far as my own journal goes, I put topics out to be discussed. I expect and even enjoy some disagreement. If it is a public post, unless I say something to the contrary, I would prefer that you disagree with me right in the comments, where other people interested in the discussion can easily see it and chime in, than that you go back to your own journal to do so.

Unless it makes you more comfortable, or your thoughts have touched off an only-somewhat related essay, or you want to share it with your own friends list. Or, of course, your comments run long and you get tired of chunking them up to fit the #$%^! character limit.

Pushing the public/private/semi-private space metaphor, I regard this as like starting a conversation with passing neighbors from my front stoop. Yes, there are some perks and privileges I reserve because it's my house and not the town square, but at the same time, there are many I happily cede because I'm choosing to interact with the street and not my living room.

Which is not, really, a disagreement with the original poster -- I agree that we all set the rules for our own journals, and I share her sense of it being semi-public -- but since my idea of what's good manners for semi-public seems to be significantly different from hers, and the essay's being widely linked for its broader application to LJ manners in general and not just in her space, this seemed like a good moment for a clarification.