I can't remember the first time I saw The Dot and the Line, only that it's stayed with me for over 25 years. No wonder. I looked it up on IMDB, and it turns out that Chuck Jones directed it, Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth) wrote it, Robert Morley narrated it, and it won an Oscar. At the time, the advertisement for the value of math impressed me more, but now, the more subtle, anti-hippie message (even though it was made in 1965), matters more.

The story is pretty simple. As the story opens, a dot (the girl) is dating a squiggle.

The line is jealous, jilted, spurned, and straight as a pin. When he learns to do this

And eventually this:

he wins the heart of the dot. One of the points was the beauty of geometry, but another was the need for structure and discipline to achieve anything. The squiggle had pretty much fulfilled his potential with his ball-of-twine impersonation. He wasn't really free, since he lacked imagination and structre. But the line is like a spirograph with Barry Bonds' connections.

This last quarter, I've felt more or less like the squiggle. Playing from behind a lot, and not focused enough to move forward very far. Blogging, didn't plan properly for the quarter, trying to bill enough hours. Next quarter, it's going to have to be the line.