Season of Smog

I won't say it. I promise I won't say it. I won't say "A fog is down," (although one is). No--I'll do this instead:

GOOD

* It's rather exciting, looking out the window into a wall of white. Makes one want to say things like ineffable and dream of a world wiped clean, waiting for imagination to refurnish it. When the fog lifts, the Pacific Press building will dissolve with it, rising up into the sky and floating away in a gust of sand. I will have an unobstructed view of the harbour, then.

* It's fun to go out in the fog--or, in my case, think about going out there--collar up, head down, pretending to find the limited visibility annoying.

* It deadens the roar of the city (especially nice on rubbish day. Ah, how those dust-trucks do clatter!)

* One can find cheap thrills in the unexpected emergence of birds from the mist. One minute, you're gazing into the sea of the sky, enjoying the foggy falling feeling you're getting; the next, BRAWK! Before you can jump or cry out, the packbawky's flown off into packhistory, leaving you to wonder if it was ever there at all.

* You can say pretentious stuff like the sea of the sky and get away with it. Fog excuses any amount of overblown romanticism, by virtue of having caused it in the first place.

BAD

* It smells terrible, as though someone had scraped all the dead fish off the bottom of the ocean, mixed them with sewage in a giant Dumpster, then sprayed the result over the city like the world's most ill-advised perfume.

* Although the fog appears denser towards the horizon, it is, in fact, equally thick where you're standing. It's in your living room. It's in your kitchen. It's even in your closet, and when you get dressed this morning, everything you put on will be ever so slightly clammy.

* It causes disease. Folks in books are always getting fevers out of mists and fogs. There's a virus in every droplet, mark my words, and a thousand amoebas in every scummy countertop film.

* When it rises, the Pacific Center building never really goes up with it. My view of the water is still obstructed, and the seagull symphony retains its concert hall.

* The whole bird thing is only funny once per fug:

First bird: "Yeek! A bird! Oh, it's just like that film, with all the birds! It's going to get you!"

Second, third, &c...: "Yeek, a bird. Hum, hum; pass the salt, won't you?"

* There's never a fog at the height of summer. The presence of fog in the streets indicates the onset of the bare seasons.

* It's never quite possible to explain the feeling one gets when a fog's down. Excitement? Not quite--not precisely. Annoyance? A little bit, maybe. Trepidation? Oh, yes--especially if one's driving. A sense of adventure? Melancholy? Oh, sod it. I should just have said a fog was down, as per usual. Because there is, you know. There is.

That reminds me: either I've got a new downstairs neighbour, or the existing one has picked up a most unpleasant habit. See, I've never met the folks from the suite immediately below me, but due to a terrible ventilation system, they've never been far from my thoughts. Oh, it's been pure torture, sometimes. I recall one particular evening, some months back, when the neighbours were having fried chicken. Me, I hadn't eaten in a week, save for hot water with tomato paste in. I was starving. I'd have eaten my own foot if it had had any flesh on it. And then, up through the floor came this chicken smell, so strong I could practically feel the skin between my teeth, the juices squirting over my tongue. I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed, mouth hanging open. Stella sniffed too, although she'd been fed better than I had.

Anyhow, smells travel in this building, is all I'm saying--so folks ought not to be smoking. Smoking! That's what my neighbour's been doing this week, all week long. It's given me a right sore throat, to say nothing of the irritation it's been causing my eyes and lungs. I've half a mind to ring the building manager. Smoking isn't expressly forbidden in this building, but it's bloody inconsiderate. You wouldn't come round and fart outside someone's door, would you? Or--or, would you get a lot of damp bay leaves together in a pot, and burn them slowly, so that an obnoxious bay-leaf smell spread everywhere? Didn't think so. What makes burning tobacco leaves any more acceptable? Faugh. Double faugh.

The air, alas, isn't the only thing that's unclear round these parts. I've been having a bit of an FTP problem, trying to install Expression Engine on my art site. I e-mailed my host (which would soon be my ex-host if I could afford to switch) and asked them about it. The conversation went something like this:

Me: I'm having a problem FTPing files to your server--[insert details here].

Tech Support: Here's another FTP program! Try this one!

Me: Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, that didn't work. I have tried a few FTP clients now, and gotten the same error in every case. I think the problem is on your end, because I am able to FTP the files to other servers without trouble.

Tech Support (communicating, for some reason, in hideous sky-blue text): LIKE OMGWTF THERE ARE 800+ FTP CLIENTS OUT THERE! THE 2 YOU TRIED DON'T CONSTITUTE TRYING EVERYTHING!*

Me: What the hell?

I thought about pointing out that, while there may indeed be eight hundred FTP clients out there, there must be eight thousand cheap web hosting companies, many of whom have tech support personnel that don't yell at you, but it seemed too much like work. I reported the doofus to his supervisor instead. I hope he gets no coffee breaks for a week, or some similarly heinous punishment. I hope he gets chained to his miserable bottom-of-the-corporate-chain job for the rest of his life, and sits in the same swivel chair so long it takes on the shape of his buttocks. Above all else, I hope he doesn't get fired. I'd hate to think I did him a favour.

The upshot of all this, at any rate, is that I still can't FTP, and my living room's full of smoke.

Lovely.

* Wondering what this answer had to do with my question? Ha! So was I!