(That's a BASIC joke. Never mind that the last time I did BASIC was in 11th grade, and I had to Google that to get it semi-right.)
I think there can no longer be any doubt. I have allergies.
I've never been allergic to anything. I've had plenty of the other nerd-indicative health problems -- glasses, braces, skin weirdnesses -- but never allergies. But over the last year or so I've noticed that, um, occasionally I get up in the morning and sneeze seven or eight times in a row. And that my eyes water more than they used to, and sometimes I have to wait like half an hour after getting up to put in my contacts if I don't want a raging case of the burny eyes. I also get kind of a sore throat in the morning a lot (which probably has to do with my dry heat -- I've always had nice steamy radiators until now). And there was a time last year that I thought I was getting a cold...for about four months, and one day I started to notice that the days when my allergy-prone officemates were especially affected by pollen or what have you tended to correspond pretty closely with days on which my "cold" was especially noticeable.
I'm sure it has to do with my house, which I moved into a year ago and which is around a hundred years old and likely full of all kinds of interesting dust and crap. But I think it's also the outdoors, because, as I said, the matching up of the bad allergy days with the sneezing, and it really does happen the most in the spring. Anyway, it was basically confirmed for me this morning -- I woke up with my eyes feeling like they were glued shut (that might also have had to do with the two glasses of wine I had last night with dinner, but, I mean, I may be a lightweight but I'm not THAT much of a lightweight), I sneezed a whole bunch while getting dressed, and then while I was checking my e-mail (my desk faces a window that looks east, so it's quite bright in the morning, even with the blind down) I could barely SEE, my eyes were watering and aching so much. Then I had ANOTHER sneezing fit right before leaving the house. So...yeah. Officemates confirm that it's not a great day for allergy sufferers. And one of them kindly provided me with my very first (generic) Claritin.
So I guess I'm in the club. It's hard to tell if the Claritin thing worked or not, since the symptoms usually die down after that initial morning sneeziness anyway. But I think I'm going to have to keep some around the house, from now until...FOREVER. Because I am now an allergy sufferer. And now I can start bitching about the pollen along with everybody else. Hooray?
At least this is New England, where spring usually lasts for approximately a week. On Wednesday, when the temp around here hit 82, there was a thing in the Globe where a meteorologist semi-seriously told us that we could probably put away our snow shovels for the year. And this year has been a lovely exception, but normally it rains and is 45 degrees for approximately the entire month of April (and then sometime in May it goes up to 85 and never comes back down). I certainly prefer summer to winter, but I kind of hate summer a little bit, at least after the first month or so. So I'll gladly take as long a spring as I can get, and if I have to sneeze through half of it, so be it.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
We're so green we're back around the corner to NOT green
Flagship Press. A word, please.
This is the THIRD multi-page, full-color, glossy brochure that I and everyone else in my entire office has received in the last couple of months BRAGGING ABOUT YOUR NEWFOUND COMMITMENT TO ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. OH MY GOD. Do you not see the irony in that? DO YOU NOT SEE IT? Stop sending these to me, for the love of LITTLE APPLES.
Secondary concerns: They are creepy. The die-cut on the front this time shows a fraction of a beardy guy's face; he kind of resembles Dwight from The Office. When you open it up, you...still can't tell what the point of the beardy guy is, because these brochures are insanely high-concept. The one before that, it was somebody's ghostly dead hand, and the one before that...I don't even remember. Who is picking the image to go in the die-cut? Also: The die-cut. It's not the Flagship Press logo. I finally figured out that it's these guys' logo. OK, great. But it really, really doesn't work as a die-cut. It looks like a fat elephant wearing ruffly underpants or something. I know, this brochure (THE THIRD IN A SERIES, if I didn't mention that) is intended to announce your FSC (which stands for Forest Stewardship Council, by the way) certification. But nobody really knows what that is. And your message is getting lost.
But really, none of that is important: the point here is, again, you are being recognized by this organization that's not even about environmental responsibility as a whole, its purpose is SPECIFICALLY about SAVING TREES. And it's nice that your office is recycling more and that you changed all your lightbulbs to CFBs, but you know, another nice thing to do in the service of saving trees would be to NOT PRINT UMPTEEN BAJILLION IDENTICAL BROCHURES AND SEND THEM TO ALL THE PEOPLE IN MY OFFICE, ONLY TWO OF WHOM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SELECTING A PRINT VENDOR, and also DOING IT THREE TIMES IN A ROW FOR THE SAME PURPOSE. WHAT? WHAT? I JUST SERIOUSLY DO NOT GET IT.
Unless this is some kind of weird Phillip Morris-y court-mandated self-loathing "We found out that we make cigarettes, which was a shock to all of us, because it turns out that cigarettes are DANGEROUS! and cause CANCER! and are super disgusting and anyone who makes them is also super disgusting and we are so ashamed and the only thing that will make it right is for all of you to PROMISE NEVER TO EVER EVER SMOKE MEAN NASTY CIGARETTES and also to possibly incarcerate us preemptively like a wolfman" kind of...that whole Phillip Morris thing creeps me out and I lost my train of thought there. But anyway. I don't think it's that. They're excited about their certification, and seem ENTIRELY OBLIVIOUS to the fact that sending out thousands of brochures to announce it is very odd. It's like me holding a giant barbecue to raise money for PETA. Or having some sexy teens hold a car wash to fund a documentary film about the sexualization of our culture and how it affects younger and younger kids. Is it supposed to be irony? Is it saying, "Look at all the crazy bullshit people insist on printing on glossy brochures and mass-mailing to everyone under the sun! Like the one you're holding! Ha ha! But here at Flagship, we've minimized the damage useless pieces of crap like this one do to our earth. So the next time you see one of these, as you're throwing it away you can think: if only it had been printed by us, it would have a slightly smaller destructive impact!" Or, are they saying that they are now in fact SO INSANELY GREEN that they can print shitloads of brochures, dunk each one in a bucket of gloss, and mail them to the four corners of the earth and IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SUPER GREEN? Are they printed on compost? On roadside trash collected by Indonesian slum-dwellers? (Totally irrelevant aside: How hilarious is it that that organization also sells maple syrup? Oh, Vermont.) Because unless they are -- and, honestly, even if they are -- STOP PRINTING, CUTTING, ASSEMBLING, AND SHIPPING THEM TO ME. For serious.
Anyway. I'm gonna recycle it. And them I'm gonna feel good about myself, because I put something in a blue bin and saved the earth! I am awesome! And I'm going to celebrate by driving my SUV to Wal-mart, buying an assload of paper plates, and throwing a barbecue for some sexy teens! See, being green isn't so hard!
This is the THIRD multi-page, full-color, glossy brochure that I and everyone else in my entire office has received in the last couple of months BRAGGING ABOUT YOUR NEWFOUND COMMITMENT TO ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. OH MY GOD. Do you not see the irony in that? DO YOU NOT SEE IT? Stop sending these to me, for the love of LITTLE APPLES.
Secondary concerns: They are creepy. The die-cut on the front this time shows a fraction of a beardy guy's face; he kind of resembles Dwight from The Office. When you open it up, you...still can't tell what the point of the beardy guy is, because these brochures are insanely high-concept. The one before that, it was somebody's ghostly dead hand, and the one before that...I don't even remember. Who is picking the image to go in the die-cut? Also: The die-cut. It's not the Flagship Press logo. I finally figured out that it's these guys' logo. OK, great. But it really, really doesn't work as a die-cut. It looks like a fat elephant wearing ruffly underpants or something. I know, this brochure (THE THIRD IN A SERIES, if I didn't mention that) is intended to announce your FSC (which stands for Forest Stewardship Council, by the way) certification. But nobody really knows what that is. And your message is getting lost.
But really, none of that is important: the point here is, again, you are being recognized by this organization that's not even about environmental responsibility as a whole, its purpose is SPECIFICALLY about SAVING TREES. And it's nice that your office is recycling more and that you changed all your lightbulbs to CFBs, but you know, another nice thing to do in the service of saving trees would be to NOT PRINT UMPTEEN BAJILLION IDENTICAL BROCHURES AND SEND THEM TO ALL THE PEOPLE IN MY OFFICE, ONLY TWO OF WHOM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SELECTING A PRINT VENDOR, and also DOING IT THREE TIMES IN A ROW FOR THE SAME PURPOSE. WHAT? WHAT? I JUST SERIOUSLY DO NOT GET IT.
Unless this is some kind of weird Phillip Morris-y court-mandated self-loathing "We found out that we make cigarettes, which was a shock to all of us, because it turns out that cigarettes are DANGEROUS! and cause CANCER! and are super disgusting and anyone who makes them is also super disgusting and we are so ashamed and the only thing that will make it right is for all of you to PROMISE NEVER TO EVER EVER SMOKE MEAN NASTY CIGARETTES and also to possibly incarcerate us preemptively like a wolfman" kind of...that whole Phillip Morris thing creeps me out and I lost my train of thought there. But anyway. I don't think it's that. They're excited about their certification, and seem ENTIRELY OBLIVIOUS to the fact that sending out thousands of brochures to announce it is very odd. It's like me holding a giant barbecue to raise money for PETA. Or having some sexy teens hold a car wash to fund a documentary film about the sexualization of our culture and how it affects younger and younger kids. Is it supposed to be irony? Is it saying, "Look at all the crazy bullshit people insist on printing on glossy brochures and mass-mailing to everyone under the sun! Like the one you're holding! Ha ha! But here at Flagship, we've minimized the damage useless pieces of crap like this one do to our earth. So the next time you see one of these, as you're throwing it away you can think: if only it had been printed by us, it would have a slightly smaller destructive impact!" Or, are they saying that they are now in fact SO INSANELY GREEN that they can print shitloads of brochures, dunk each one in a bucket of gloss, and mail them to the four corners of the earth and IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SUPER GREEN? Are they printed on compost? On roadside trash collected by Indonesian slum-dwellers? (Totally irrelevant aside: How hilarious is it that that organization also sells maple syrup? Oh, Vermont.) Because unless they are -- and, honestly, even if they are -- STOP PRINTING, CUTTING, ASSEMBLING, AND SHIPPING THEM TO ME. For serious.
Anyway. I'm gonna recycle it. And them I'm gonna feel good about myself, because I put something in a blue bin and saved the earth! I am awesome! And I'm going to celebrate by driving my SUV to Wal-mart, buying an assload of paper plates, and throwing a barbecue for some sexy teens! See, being green isn't so hard!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Have a nice day; or don't, it's cool
I had to exchange some concealer at CVS on my way home tonight -- I bought it the other day and there's something weird with the brush; you pull it out and it glops all over the place in a way it shouldn't do. I think maybe there's usually a thing in the neck of the bottle that sort of scrapes the brush off as you pull it out, and it's missing from this tube, or something like that. I opened it like three times and got it all over myself every time. But I had the receipt and the packaging, and I just wanted to exchange it for the exact same one, so, easy enough.
Something I've observed about this CVS is that the people who work the register there do not talk to you. They talk to each other quite a bit, but I don't remember the last time someone at CVS actually spoke to me. These days they don't even seem to ask you for your CVS card like they used to (although I usually dutifully pull it out anyway, even though, unlike the Shaw's card, which awesomely gives you discounts on everything, the CVS card never appears to do squat for me, and is probably being used one hundred percent for creepy marketing purposes like calculating my household income from how many boxes of Cheez-Its I buy or tracking my cycle or some shit). They definitely do not do the greeting patter or tell you the total or anything like that. They all speak French, or something very close, to each other -- I am guessing that they're perhaps mostly Haitian, but that's only a guess.
Let me just interject that I am NOT one of those "Why can't they smile and ask me how I am and act like they're delighted to serve me? DON'T THEY WANT TO MAKE MY DAY A LITTLE MORE SPECIAL? WHAT HAS CUSTOMER SERVICE COME TO IN THESE UNHOLY TIMES?!!?!??!?" types -- in fact, I'm kind of the opposite as I'd usually rather sort of get in and out and not engage in protracted "are you finding everything you're looking for?"/"can I help you find a size?"/"would you like me to start a fitting room for you so you don't have to carry those mean heavy clothes around all by your teeny tiny self and also so you will hopefully forget how many things you picked out to try on?"-type dialogue. Not that I mind it either; it's just what you do when you work retail (as I remember well -- and I also think it's terribly rude when customers are on the phone for the entire transaction, or refuse to make eye contact or respond to anything said to them, and basically treat the person behind the register like a human-shaped vending machine), and it's company policy to make you ask the goofy things like "What brings you here today?", which was what I got at Origins yesterday...that was a new one. They're not letting you get away with a yes or no answer. That's advanced-level sales interrogation right there. Well played, Origins! And I appreciate your leaving me alone after my "Oh, I'm just browsing, thanks" instead of pushing to find out what REALLY brought me there that day, and I'm sorry I didn't buy any body wash. By the way, you smell great, Origins. Unlike the Body Shop, which smells like some kind of horrifying tropical Hades with those revolting pineapple candles or oil lamps or whatever they are that they burn outside the door all day and night.
ANYWAY. I'm not really the type to particularly give a crap whether the cashier at CVS tells me the total or if I read it off the thing. (Nor, I suppose I should add, am I an "OMG U R IN AMERICA SPEEK ENGLISH!!!1!!" type.) But it is a little weird and, certainly, off-putting to be COMPLETELY IGNORED as I'm doing a sales transaction. I'm talking no eye contact, animated and uninterrupted conversations in French, that thing where they hold out their hand for the money and I hold it out to them and they don't notice for a few seconds until they look up and realize I'm giving it to them (which I guess I could solve by physically plunking it into their outstretched hand, but that seems weird). So, yeah. CVS. They do not talk to you. It's odd.
So when I was thinking about exchanging this strangely overfilled/somehow otherwise mysteriously nonfunctional tube of concealer, I thought, "I guess one of those CVS cashiers is going to have to talk to me THIS time, heh."
So I bring it up to the register, where the guy is reading the paper, and it more or less goes down like this:
Me: (getting out the old concealer and receipt) "Hi -- I need to exchange this..."
Cashier: (reading newspaper; eventually puts newspaper down and turns more or less in my direction)
Me: "I just need to exchange this concealer for..."
Cashier: (scanner already in hand, automatically holds out hand for whatever I'm buying so he can scan it)
Me: "Sorry, I actually need to exchange this one for this one. I just bought this the other day..."
Cashier: (realizes he has to listen to me; puts scanner down)
Me: (wondering how I'm going to explain to this large man the manner in which a tube of makeup can be "broken") "Um...see, the brush in this one...doesn't work. So I just want to...exchange it for this one? I have the receipt..."
Cashier: (holds out hand for new concealer)
Me: (hands it to him)
Cashier: (holds out hand for old concealer)
Me: (hands it to him) "They're the same...that one is just..."
Cashier: (studies the backs of the new and old concealers; holds out hand for receipt)
Me: (hands it to him)
Cashier: (studies receipt; hands me new concealer)
Me: "Oh, so can I just -- "
(much shuffling where I think he's handing me the receipt and then he doesn't and I don't know if I can just walk out with the concealer or what and he puts the old concealer down and then he puts the receipt down sort of near me and I can't tell if I should take it and I finally do)
Me: "Oh, OK -- thanks!"
Cashier: (turns back to newspaper)
Me: (takes concealer and makes like a tree and gets out of there)
So. Their perfect record is intact! Ah, CVS.
On the magazine-bulldozing front, I just finished the February 29 Entertainment Weekly, which contained an article about all the preparations going on for the Oscars, previews of such upcoming spring films as Horton Hears a Who and The Other Boleyn Girl, and -- whoops -- a rapturous review of Love and Consequences, that "memoir" about the girl being raised in a foster home in South Central L.A. with gangbanger brothers that it has since been revealed that she completely, one hundred percent made up when her sister was like, "What the hell, I think I'd have remembered if this happened" and turned her in. Awk! Ward!
Something I've observed about this CVS is that the people who work the register there do not talk to you. They talk to each other quite a bit, but I don't remember the last time someone at CVS actually spoke to me. These days they don't even seem to ask you for your CVS card like they used to (although I usually dutifully pull it out anyway, even though, unlike the Shaw's card, which awesomely gives you discounts on everything, the CVS card never appears to do squat for me, and is probably being used one hundred percent for creepy marketing purposes like calculating my household income from how many boxes of Cheez-Its I buy or tracking my cycle or some shit). They definitely do not do the greeting patter or tell you the total or anything like that. They all speak French, or something very close, to each other -- I am guessing that they're perhaps mostly Haitian, but that's only a guess.
Let me just interject that I am NOT one of those "Why can't they smile and ask me how I am and act like they're delighted to serve me? DON'T THEY WANT TO MAKE MY DAY A LITTLE MORE SPECIAL? WHAT HAS CUSTOMER SERVICE COME TO IN THESE UNHOLY TIMES?!!?!??!?" types -- in fact, I'm kind of the opposite as I'd usually rather sort of get in and out and not engage in protracted "are you finding everything you're looking for?"/"can I help you find a size?"/"would you like me to start a fitting room for you so you don't have to carry those mean heavy clothes around all by your teeny tiny self and also so you will hopefully forget how many things you picked out to try on?"-type dialogue. Not that I mind it either; it's just what you do when you work retail (as I remember well -- and I also think it's terribly rude when customers are on the phone for the entire transaction, or refuse to make eye contact or respond to anything said to them, and basically treat the person behind the register like a human-shaped vending machine), and it's company policy to make you ask the goofy things like "What brings you here today?", which was what I got at Origins yesterday...that was a new one. They're not letting you get away with a yes or no answer. That's advanced-level sales interrogation right there. Well played, Origins! And I appreciate your leaving me alone after my "Oh, I'm just browsing, thanks" instead of pushing to find out what REALLY brought me there that day, and I'm sorry I didn't buy any body wash. By the way, you smell great, Origins. Unlike the Body Shop, which smells like some kind of horrifying tropical Hades with those revolting pineapple candles or oil lamps or whatever they are that they burn outside the door all day and night.
ANYWAY. I'm not really the type to particularly give a crap whether the cashier at CVS tells me the total or if I read it off the thing. (Nor, I suppose I should add, am I an "OMG U R IN AMERICA SPEEK ENGLISH!!!1!!" type.) But it is a little weird and, certainly, off-putting to be COMPLETELY IGNORED as I'm doing a sales transaction. I'm talking no eye contact, animated and uninterrupted conversations in French, that thing where they hold out their hand for the money and I hold it out to them and they don't notice for a few seconds until they look up and realize I'm giving it to them (which I guess I could solve by physically plunking it into their outstretched hand, but that seems weird). So, yeah. CVS. They do not talk to you. It's odd.
So when I was thinking about exchanging this strangely overfilled/somehow otherwise mysteriously nonfunctional tube of concealer, I thought, "I guess one of those CVS cashiers is going to have to talk to me THIS time, heh."
So I bring it up to the register, where the guy is reading the paper, and it more or less goes down like this:
Me: (getting out the old concealer and receipt) "Hi -- I need to exchange this..."
Cashier: (reading newspaper; eventually puts newspaper down and turns more or less in my direction)
Me: "I just need to exchange this concealer for..."
Cashier: (scanner already in hand, automatically holds out hand for whatever I'm buying so he can scan it)
Me: "Sorry, I actually need to exchange this one for this one. I just bought this the other day..."
Cashier: (realizes he has to listen to me; puts scanner down)
Me: (wondering how I'm going to explain to this large man the manner in which a tube of makeup can be "broken") "Um...see, the brush in this one...doesn't work. So I just want to...exchange it for this one? I have the receipt..."
Cashier: (holds out hand for new concealer)
Me: (hands it to him)
Cashier: (holds out hand for old concealer)
Me: (hands it to him) "They're the same...that one is just..."
Cashier: (studies the backs of the new and old concealers; holds out hand for receipt)
Me: (hands it to him)
Cashier: (studies receipt; hands me new concealer)
Me: "Oh, so can I just -- "
(much shuffling where I think he's handing me the receipt and then he doesn't and I don't know if I can just walk out with the concealer or what and he puts the old concealer down and then he puts the receipt down sort of near me and I can't tell if I should take it and I finally do)
Me: "Oh, OK -- thanks!"
Cashier: (turns back to newspaper)
Me: (takes concealer and makes like a tree and gets out of there)
So. Their perfect record is intact! Ah, CVS.
On the magazine-bulldozing front, I just finished the February 29 Entertainment Weekly, which contained an article about all the preparations going on for the Oscars, previews of such upcoming spring films as Horton Hears a Who and The Other Boleyn Girl, and -- whoops -- a rapturous review of Love and Consequences, that "memoir" about the girl being raised in a foster home in South Central L.A. with gangbanger brothers that it has since been revealed that she completely, one hundred percent made up when her sister was like, "What the hell, I think I'd have remembered if this happened" and turned her in. Awk! Ward!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Reading is FUNdamentally demonstrating to me that I have no time-management skills
When I was reading Childhood's End a couple weeks ago, something occurred to me. That something was: I love reading.
When I was a kid, I devoured books like crazy. I was an early reader ("early talker, late walker," my mom always says, which I think means that I was destined to become a brainiac with no coordination skills, which is pretty much what happened), and we'd go to the library every week when I was little and I'd get out like seven chapter books and read them all in a week. In kindergarten we learned letters, and I was excused to wander around the classroom because I already knew how to read. One of my favorite books when I was seven was the novelization of Annie (yes, the movie Annie, which I was obsessed with) -- it was by Leonore Fleischer. I can still quote passages from it. I remember being in second grade carrying it around with me in tatters. Ah, here it is! I should buy a fresh copy. Or not, since I'm sure mine is still at home somewhere.
AAAAAANYHOO. What further occurred to me, as I was sitting on the couch, or in my office, or in the waiting room waiting for my tax appointment, or on the bus, either snatching precious seconds to read or longing to, was that I rarely have that "OMG can we please hurry this up so I can REEEEEEEEAAAAAAD" feeling anymore that was basically a constant state for me as a kid. Because...I hardly ever read for fun anymore. Which SUCKS. The reasons for this, I think, are many, but they seem to boil down to three things:
1. TV. I watch too much of it. Thanks, DVR!
2. The Internet/computer games. I screw around too much with them. Thanks, Civilization IV!
3. My heavy magazine load.
Number 3 is what I want to discuss. See, it's like this. I get three weekly magazines: Newsweek, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly. Newsweek gives me a summary of what's going on in the world. EW gives me a summary of what's going on in the entertainment world, which I like knowing about because I like pop culture, and also, EW has some funny writing. And The New Yorker gives me analysis with the liberal slant I so enjoy (I heart you, Hendrik Hertzberg), as well as long and kickass stories about all kinds of awesome crap from how baseballs are made to finding a lost ancient city in the wilds of Brazil to a crazy ex-Greenpeace guy who sails around looking for illegal whaling ships and then crashes his boat into them to hand-making pasta in Italy to the scrap metal trade to what it's like to climb a giant redwood to scandals in the classical-music world to a man who was struck by lightning and was suddenly able to play the piano to what in the hell is up with Turkmenistan. I love The New Yorker. I enjoy all three of them, really, except Newsweek is lame a lot of the time (I do not particularly heart you, Jon Meacham, though I do love Sharon Begley and Fareed Zakaria, and I am fond of Jonathan Alter). But I'm perpetually about two months behind. I have them piled up by my bed. And whenever I read anything else, I basically feel guilty because I'm not whittling away at my pile of magazines.
Some relevant facts: 1. I like to read my magazines in order. 2. I tend to err on the side of anal-retentively reading everything. 3. My bus commute is only about 15 minutes each way these days.
The thing is, I like to know stuff. There is so much in the world to know, and I'll never know it all, but it's not even the things that I merely WANT to know -- language stuff and trivia and who that guy is who was on that show and how World of Warcraft works (I once spent a day reading up on it, because I briefly considered joining it, and then I was like, "not if you ever want to see the sun again, my friend") -- that I worry about. There's so much that I feel that I NEED to know that I don't. About politics, about the war, about other countries, about environmental issues, about social issues, about history -- I'm not saying I don't know anything, because I think I'm decently informed about most things, but I never know as much as I feel I should. And before you say "Then, stop worrying about it and pick up a book, dumbass -- here, you can start with this one" -- sure, I could read that book, but then how much time would I lose on all the other subjects? And why should I start there? Is that the most important thing in the universe? And sometimes that's what it comes down to -- I feel as if I can't really take a serious crack at learning everything I need to know until I figure out the priority order of everything in the universe. Which is, obviously, not possible. This is the kind of stuff I fret over. But, this is my way of ordering it, I guess -- reading these three magazines. This way I figure I at least get a steady diet of some knowledge.
So whenever I want to pick up a book, I think of the magazines I need to get to and I reach for them instead. This isn't new -- but what IS new is my realization (which seems obvious now) that plowing through them as I do isn't fun. It's a chore. It's not as big of a chore as doing homework or cleaning the litterbox, but it's still a chore. I guess I just thought that I don't love reading anymore as much as I used to. But I think that's just not true at all. I'm MAKING it not fun for myself. Sure, all these magazines have value (to me). Sure, I'm glad when I read something cool in The New Yorker. But I've decided I need to spend less time reading them. I need to catch up, and then I need to stop making it such a huge thing.
Over the last several days I've kicked into "skimming" gear, with the goal of having them all read...sometime soon. I really don't know how long it will take. But to keep myself motivated and stop myself from drifting back into "read every word" mode, as I always do eventually, I thought I'd keep a tally on here of how far I have to go. I think the best way to do this is to note the date, and then note what the date is on the one I'm reading, and hopefully they will get closer and closer. Sometimes I also enjoy seeing what the "current" event being discussed in the issue is. I was amused, a couple of weeks ago, to pick up my EW with the worried headline, "WILL THE OSCARS HAPPEN?" (Spoiler: They did.)
So I intended to post this back last week when I was starting this non-project, but, well, I didn't get around to it. Might as well start today. It's April 1. I just finished a Newsweek and I'm onto a New Yorker, dated February 25. One of the Talk of the Town stories is about Roger Clemens's steroid testimony. Remember when Congress wasted many hours closely exploring the nuances of Roger's butt? Good times.
That's pretty good -- I'm only a little over a month behind now, which is certainly better than the six or seven weeks I was before. I'm gonna do it! Eye of the tiger! And then I'm going to READ SOME MUTHAFUGGIN' BOOKS, y'all. I cannot wait. Even though probably the first ones I'm going to pick up are the second and third volumes of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which (a) are for children and (b) I've already read. But, what the hell. I want to relive them, I don't really remember what happens, and I want that feeling of staying up til 2 a.m. blowing through a good story.
Next I might get this. It's about Iceland and it seems the author won the Nobel prize in 1955. I saw some guy reading this on the bus (I was standing in front of where he was sitting, so I had ample time to covertly read the author's name at the top of the page), and then I came across it again -- in Newsweek, I think -- and it seems interesting, and it feels like I OUGHT to read it if the universe put it in front of me twice in one week (even though what probably happened is, this guy saw the mention of it in Newsweek and then a month and a half later got around to reading it). I have been to Iceland and it was super cool. So I'm all excited about reading that, someday in the glimmering future, when I'm allowed to read books again.
Anyway, one of the rules I'm laying down for myself is that I'm not allowed to start buying tons of books until AFTER I have gotten to the end of the magazine pile. So just keep your pants on, there, Laxness.
Other rules, by the way, include:
Or I could just give up TV. But, I mean. Let's be real.
When I was a kid, I devoured books like crazy. I was an early reader ("early talker, late walker," my mom always says, which I think means that I was destined to become a brainiac with no coordination skills, which is pretty much what happened), and we'd go to the library every week when I was little and I'd get out like seven chapter books and read them all in a week. In kindergarten we learned letters, and I was excused to wander around the classroom because I already knew how to read. One of my favorite books when I was seven was the novelization of Annie (yes, the movie Annie, which I was obsessed with) -- it was by Leonore Fleischer. I can still quote passages from it. I remember being in second grade carrying it around with me in tatters. Ah, here it is! I should buy a fresh copy. Or not, since I'm sure mine is still at home somewhere.
AAAAAANYHOO. What further occurred to me, as I was sitting on the couch, or in my office, or in the waiting room waiting for my tax appointment, or on the bus, either snatching precious seconds to read or longing to, was that I rarely have that "OMG can we please hurry this up so I can REEEEEEEEAAAAAAD" feeling anymore that was basically a constant state for me as a kid. Because...I hardly ever read for fun anymore. Which SUCKS. The reasons for this, I think, are many, but they seem to boil down to three things:
1. TV. I watch too much of it. Thanks, DVR!
2. The Internet/computer games. I screw around too much with them. Thanks, Civilization IV!
3. My heavy magazine load.
Number 3 is what I want to discuss. See, it's like this. I get three weekly magazines: Newsweek, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly. Newsweek gives me a summary of what's going on in the world. EW gives me a summary of what's going on in the entertainment world, which I like knowing about because I like pop culture, and also, EW has some funny writing. And The New Yorker gives me analysis with the liberal slant I so enjoy (I heart you, Hendrik Hertzberg), as well as long and kickass stories about all kinds of awesome crap from how baseballs are made to finding a lost ancient city in the wilds of Brazil to a crazy ex-Greenpeace guy who sails around looking for illegal whaling ships and then crashes his boat into them to hand-making pasta in Italy to the scrap metal trade to what it's like to climb a giant redwood to scandals in the classical-music world to a man who was struck by lightning and was suddenly able to play the piano to what in the hell is up with Turkmenistan. I love The New Yorker. I enjoy all three of them, really, except Newsweek is lame a lot of the time (I do not particularly heart you, Jon Meacham, though I do love Sharon Begley and Fareed Zakaria, and I am fond of Jonathan Alter). But I'm perpetually about two months behind. I have them piled up by my bed. And whenever I read anything else, I basically feel guilty because I'm not whittling away at my pile of magazines.
Some relevant facts: 1. I like to read my magazines in order. 2. I tend to err on the side of anal-retentively reading everything. 3. My bus commute is only about 15 minutes each way these days.
The thing is, I like to know stuff. There is so much in the world to know, and I'll never know it all, but it's not even the things that I merely WANT to know -- language stuff and trivia and who that guy is who was on that show and how World of Warcraft works (I once spent a day reading up on it, because I briefly considered joining it, and then I was like, "not if you ever want to see the sun again, my friend") -- that I worry about. There's so much that I feel that I NEED to know that I don't. About politics, about the war, about other countries, about environmental issues, about social issues, about history -- I'm not saying I don't know anything, because I think I'm decently informed about most things, but I never know as much as I feel I should. And before you say "Then, stop worrying about it and pick up a book, dumbass -- here, you can start with this one" -- sure, I could read that book, but then how much time would I lose on all the other subjects? And why should I start there? Is that the most important thing in the universe? And sometimes that's what it comes down to -- I feel as if I can't really take a serious crack at learning everything I need to know until I figure out the priority order of everything in the universe. Which is, obviously, not possible. This is the kind of stuff I fret over. But, this is my way of ordering it, I guess -- reading these three magazines. This way I figure I at least get a steady diet of some knowledge.
So whenever I want to pick up a book, I think of the magazines I need to get to and I reach for them instead. This isn't new -- but what IS new is my realization (which seems obvious now) that plowing through them as I do isn't fun. It's a chore. It's not as big of a chore as doing homework or cleaning the litterbox, but it's still a chore. I guess I just thought that I don't love reading anymore as much as I used to. But I think that's just not true at all. I'm MAKING it not fun for myself. Sure, all these magazines have value (to me). Sure, I'm glad when I read something cool in The New Yorker. But I've decided I need to spend less time reading them. I need to catch up, and then I need to stop making it such a huge thing.
Over the last several days I've kicked into "skimming" gear, with the goal of having them all read...sometime soon. I really don't know how long it will take. But to keep myself motivated and stop myself from drifting back into "read every word" mode, as I always do eventually, I thought I'd keep a tally on here of how far I have to go. I think the best way to do this is to note the date, and then note what the date is on the one I'm reading, and hopefully they will get closer and closer. Sometimes I also enjoy seeing what the "current" event being discussed in the issue is. I was amused, a couple of weeks ago, to pick up my EW with the worried headline, "WILL THE OSCARS HAPPEN?" (Spoiler: They did.)
So I intended to post this back last week when I was starting this non-project, but, well, I didn't get around to it. Might as well start today. It's April 1. I just finished a Newsweek and I'm onto a New Yorker, dated February 25. One of the Talk of the Town stories is about Roger Clemens's steroid testimony. Remember when Congress wasted many hours closely exploring the nuances of Roger's butt? Good times.
That's pretty good -- I'm only a little over a month behind now, which is certainly better than the six or seven weeks I was before. I'm gonna do it! Eye of the tiger! And then I'm going to READ SOME MUTHAFUGGIN' BOOKS, y'all. I cannot wait. Even though probably the first ones I'm going to pick up are the second and third volumes of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which (a) are for children and (b) I've already read. But, what the hell. I want to relive them, I don't really remember what happens, and I want that feeling of staying up til 2 a.m. blowing through a good story.
Next I might get this. It's about Iceland and it seems the author won the Nobel prize in 1955. I saw some guy reading this on the bus (I was standing in front of where he was sitting, so I had ample time to covertly read the author's name at the top of the page), and then I came across it again -- in Newsweek, I think -- and it seems interesting, and it feels like I OUGHT to read it if the universe put it in front of me twice in one week (even though what probably happened is, this guy saw the mention of it in Newsweek and then a month and a half later got around to reading it). I have been to Iceland and it was super cool. So I'm all excited about reading that, someday in the glimmering future, when I'm allowed to read books again.
Anyway, one of the rules I'm laying down for myself is that I'm not allowed to start buying tons of books until AFTER I have gotten to the end of the magazine pile. So just keep your pants on, there, Laxness.
Other rules, by the way, include:
- No reading political stuff that is hilariously stale (e.g., "Can anyone beat Romney?" Actually, in my delayed universe, Romney has recently conceded, finally).
- No reading anything boring just because I think it's good for me (Seymour Hirsch, your Middle East stuff...it's interesting, dude, and I hate skipping it because I want to know as much about that as I can, but it's usually about 25 pages long and full of conspiracy theories).
- Nothing about the art world or architecture or theater unless it REALLY grabs me (sorry, entire back section of New Yorker).
- No detailed articles on TV shows or movies that I have not watched and do not plan to ever watch (Desperate Housewives, I'm looking at you, my polar-opposite-of-what-I-would-ever-watch-on-TV friend).
- No tips on something that does not affect my current life at all (e.g., keeping yourself fit after 65 when you're a man who has had a heart attack, paying for your kids' college education, what kind of Blackberry to get, and YES I USUALLY READ ALL OF THIS, because I have a problem).
Or I could just give up TV. But, I mean. Let's be real.
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