post the twenty-eighth, 2013

time is a funny thing.

the evening of 30 january, three days ago, i stood in front of a scanner at a local fed-ex kinkos and fed a couple hundred photos through the machine. i got it down to a science and could touch the onscreen buttons before the annoyingly cloying automated voice chimed in with the. same. instructions. every. time. c'mon, lady - i got it already! point being - the activity consumed two hours. that's 100 photos per hour, 1.67 per minute, .75 per second. quite a few pictures and a recognisable chunk of time. was it tedious? a bit. did the time drag? no, not really. the pure busyness of the task overwhelmed my capacity to register the passage of time.

for the course of two hours one night, i was able to pleasantly pass the time in mindless monotony. well, actually, it wasn't mindless. not exactly. there was an element of focus required to keep things moving along. it just didn't require imagination, creativity, problem solving skills, or even a comprehension of language, really. i mean, ol' nasty voice was instructing me over and over again, but the instructions were superfluous.

and, yeah, it was pleasant enough. i didn't need to be anywhere else. my feet didn't hurt nor did my head, stomach, or any other part of me. i wasn't too hot or too cold. i was a tidge thirsty, but not terribly so. same with hungry. i mean, don't get me wrong. pleasant should not be confused with fun or entertaining. in this case, pleasantness was merely the absence of unpleasantness.

i don't think i would want to do that sort of activity all the time. it would be boring. the repetitive motion would no doubt become painful. to think i spent two hours doing that -- two hours that could have been spent... what... writing to you, i suppose. is that any more useful, writing to you? now, that's a tough question. writing has a connotation of usefulness in a way that scanning 200 pictures does not, but the two hours of picture scanning were a means to an end. i don't think such a compliment could be paid to this blah-g.