So Little Time, So Much To Do

The harder I work, the harder I play.

The internet is my playground of the moment. And here are my toys.

Allow me to introduce Jay Asher. He's my person of the moment because of his job history:

[He] has worked at an independent bookstore, an outlet bookstore, a chain bookstore, and two public libraries. He hopes, someday, to work for a used bookstore.

That has got to have been fun. In one of my alternate universes, I know that I am working at random bookstores and libraries and being completely happy doing so.

Oh yeah, Jay came to my attention because his first novel, "Thirteen Reasons Why," is getting lots of attention, both mainstream and not.

I'm adding that book to my ever-growing reading list. Ah, as if I didn't have enough to read already - what with my regular online haunts and my books. But that's okay. It's no fun to aspire to what I can easily achieve.

* * *

A few weeks ago, I had a hankering for an e-reader. The only two choices are the Kindle 2 and the Sony Reader. The latter is prettier, no question. But the Kindle 2 wins for me because you need a USB cable to download books for the Sony Reader. In-depth comparison of the two devices here.

At the end of the day, though, I don't think I am going to get an e-reader. For one thing, that's a couple hundred dollars that I am not willing to spend. And second, I think that ink and paper are essential parts of the reading experience. I mean, I have read stories online. Here's a good site for a quick lit fix, for example. But for reading and writing, I am very old-fashioned. I blog here, but my journal is written by hand. And I read pages and not screens. Just like the my favorite writers did.

* * *

All right, sleepy now, but I want first to dump some interesting articles that I came across this week. I may expound on them at a later post, but I never carry out my blog plans so don't count on that.

• the universality of p.i.-like insults
• Hamlet as a classic griever
• the internet as the solidifier of identity
  
• a critique of Obama's stem cell policy
• scientific batugan-ness

So little time, so much to do / I want to spend my days with you / So little time, so much to do / I want to spend one day with you / But if that day is not enough / I wish that we could stay in touch / But I'm not making plans for tomorrow / It never comessssssssss

* * *

Who is the you? What is the you? It's you, you, and all of you!

Egad!

This article, Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times, made me sad. I have thought quite a bit about what it would be like to get a Ph.D. and about what subject is most deserving of the hard work and devotion of such a program. I'm pretty sure that one is beyond my reach right now, but it's still pretty interesting to imagine myself going for one. Just for fun. And then there would be the graduation to the scholarly lifestyle of an academic --- living on campus, teaching, researching, writing, publishing. NICE. I'm romanticizing it, I know. But non-romanticized professions aren't very fun anyway, so no guilt in doing that.

Here's the "quote of the article":

William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Mich., who writes a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education under the name Thomas Benton, has frequently tried to dissuade undergraduates from pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities. He is convinced that the recession will push universities to trim the number of tenure-track jobs further.

“It’s hard to tell young people that universities recognize that their idealism and energy — and lack of information — are an exploitable resource,” he wrote in a recent column. “If you cannot find a tenure-track position, your university will no longer court you; it will pretend you do not exist and will act as if your unemployability is entirely your fault.”

Unless you are independently wealthy or really well connected, don’t apply, he advised.

Bottomline is that money makes the world go round. But imaginations don't cost a thing.

* * *

Speaking of money, get a hold of this: Audrey Niffenegger Receives $5 Million Advance for Second Novel. Mamma Mia! That's a lot of dough. I wouldn't mind having $5 million dollars. Wow.

Anyway, Audrey wrote "The Time Traveler's Wife." I have not actually read that book, but I plan to, eventually. Still working on Francine Prose, but I have plans of adding "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" to the mix. So, anyway, I was quite happy to discover that Audrey is a Chicagoan. Perhaps I have run into her already. Um, probably not.

* * *

I downed two Archie comics (Double Digest) in the past week. I learned to read on Archie's. I like them a lot, but I find it funny that the Riverdal High Schoolers still exhibit a level of sophistication that I, the nine-years-out-of-high-school-real-life-person, clearly do not possess. I'll be Ms. Grundy's peer in a few years, and I bet I'd still feel the same way.

I'm struggling to be coherent, so I think I'll end this and sleep. Or watch TV.

Please Don't Stop the Music

One of the most long-running debate topics (at least, in my opinion) concerns the legality of prostitution. They were talking about it then, and they're still talking about it now. I've always wanted to step back from that debate and discuss the more fundamental issue of whether prostitution is, in fact, wrong.

I've got my religious and moral paradigms well in place, and I could answer that question according to those paradigms in a heartbeat. I guess the morality of something like that is so well-accepted that questioning it is insulting, if not trite. What I would like to know is whether there is any good argument as to why prostitution is morally okay.

What makes prostitution different from other jobs or means of livelihood? Working (i.e. laboring for someone else's money) for 70 hours a week is still morally superior to one hour of sex for pay. Why?

It's not the time or the effort or the physical motions. It's the act itself. Is it the fact that sex and acts attendant to it are intimately linked to our conception? And does that give force to the argument that sex should be treated or perceived differently than, say, cleaning a window or watering a plant? I don't know.

An interesting article entitled "Can People Unlearn Their Naked Shame" was kind of getting at that, albeit in the context of clothes. Here's the gist of the article:

With the long immature period of a young human, mum and dad need to form a stable pair bond to do the looking after. But humans are more social than any other primate, living and moving in large social groups.

Psychologist Professor Dan Fessler, of the University of California, Los Angeles, says our gregariousness "poses a challenge... because those groups of course provide a source of temptation. Potentially both sexes can benefit by cheating on their partners."

That's where our shame of nudity comes in. Over thousands of generations, we've learned that showing off a naked body sends out sexual signals that threaten the security of mating pairs. And we've chosen to agree that that is a bad thing.

Interesting, yeah? Going back to the original prostitution question, do IVF and other similar technologies change the analysis?

* * *

I spend most of my time above the ground. My office is 70+ stories up, and my home-for-now is 10+ floors high. I used to love being "on top of the world, looking down on creation." I still like it. But these days, I find ground zero more comforting.

* * *

I have been revisiting my past blog entries, and I cringe a little bit at how revealing some of those entries are. I'm a private person by nature. And that's why my most interesting stories are tucked away in that little black Moleskine that I always keep close.

* * *

Last thing. I was slacking while working this afternoon when I got this message: "Sorry for stopping the music, but you haven't interacted with Slacker in the last hour."

Needy, aren't you, Slacker? The myriad of people who I haven't interacted with in these past weeks haven't stopped the music. You know why? They're not music players.

Restless Oldie

Samuel Brackett has piqued my interest because of this quote: "All the old people & the old places, they make me feel like an amphibian detained forcibly on dry land, very very dry land." Nice.

Restlessness, my old friend, is once again at my side. I'm sick of his company and wish he'd prey on someone else. But then I like him with me, occasionally, as a reminder that I can never just stop. Once I settle down, I'll forget that "it's not easy to be calm when [I've] found something going on." And the truth is that my dreams will still be here tomorrow, but I may not.

That last phrase right there was meant to be more symbolic than literal, but I suppose its two meanings shine together, one refusing to dim while the other lives (kind of like Harry Potter and Voldemort). Body and soul, that kind of thing.

Speaking of body and soul, was really sad to hear that Francis Magallona passed away. Just sad is what that is. He was only 44.

I'm 26 years old. That's too old to be restless and too young to settle down. But I did make a commitment, and I will honor it. It's a fight to the death with the monster on my screen. And when I have emerged victorious, as I know I will, perhaps the world will still want to play.

Lean, Mean Ressurecting Machine

Talk about a lean, mean resurrecting machine. I am once again making an appearance. Just like Michael Jackson but just like not, and it's the latter statement that's making me happy. That's an uncharitable statement as it is, so I'll try to be charitable and clam up about that topic. Clammed up now.

I suppose I owe you, my faithful readers, a brief explanation of where I am now and what I am doing. If my supposition is correct, I guess I'll just dispute the debt or otherwise ignore it ... for now. I am such an interesting topic, so we really must hear my thoughts on myself some time.

For now, though, I'd like to turn your attention to my favorite person of the moment: Michiko Kakutani. I have been checking out the Arts section of the NY Times daily since fairly recently, and one of her reviews caught my attention. Specifically, I thought her opening paragraph was a winner:

Nearly all the characters in Zoë Heller’s ambitious new novel, “The Believers,” are true believers. Though each chooses a different vehicle of worship — socialism, liberal humanism, orthodox Judaism or the New Age gospel of self-improvement — they are all in thrall to their own certainty, self-righteous about their own beliefs and contemptuous of anyone dimwitted enough to disagree. They are also believers in their own mythologies: the roles in which they have been cast by their parents or children or followers, the personas they have had thrust upon them and have, over the years, internalized as their own. Zeal is their default setting; sanctimony, their favorite defense.

Nice job, Michiko. Despite being an awarded journalist, she's actually pretty controversial - see here and here. I love characters, more so "writing characters", and do resolve to follow her reviews religiously from now on.

On that note, one of my usually reliable authors, Susan Elizabeth Phillips (SEP), has let me down big time with her latest novel, "What I Did for Love." If you haven't read any of her books, then skip to the next paragraph (if there is one), as my disappointment will be incomprehensible to you. One of the things I like about SEP is that she's formulaic (weird situation, guy meets girl, girl falls first, guy falls second and has sucking up to do because he didn't fall first, happy ending) but also original. In her latest novel, she did follow her formula, but her originality flew out the window. The story's a plagiarism of the Pitt-Jolie-Aniston triangle, pretty much. It was definitely not her best work. Here's hoping that the re-issue of Glitter Baby is better.

I won't get to read that book for a while, because thisfunnylittlethingcalledwork is being needy right now and, more importantly, because I'm reading another book that I'm enjoying immensely. And that is Francine Prose's "Reading Like a Writer." I guess you could call it the ultimate textbook for creative writing. It's very informational, and the many excerpts she dissects stop it from being boring. So reading-wise, I'm in a good place.

I am also sleepy. G'night.