Twenty Pages

I used to give every book 100 pages before I gave up on it, but no longer. This morning marked a new low for me giving up a book. As the title suggests, that mark was 20 pages. The book is Justine, the first of the Alexander Quartet series By Lawrence Durrell. There's a quote in the inside cover by Gore Vidal lauding this book, which left me a little more eager to read it, but not much. People's quotes rarely get me excited about a book. I'm much more likely to be swayed by shiny covers and sexy pictures. I also pick up shiny objects and put them in my mouth.

I gave up because the 4 books constitute 1000 total pages and I don't have this much time of my life to waste on a book (or series of books) that do not interest me. Being on the train every day, I have copious amounts of time to read. One might think that I'd have all sorts of patience to deal with books that might not hit the mark in an effort to expand my horizons. On the contrary, I find that I have less patience for books that don't instantly resonante with me at some level. I think this may be a combination of 2 things. One is that I am forced to read 2-3 hours a day, so I don't want to waste this forced-me-time. The second is due to the fact that I read so much, it's easier for me to identify books I have no patience for. This combination is good enough for my tastes. So out it goes.

The 4th Business Day

The fourth business day of each month is a hectic day at the company I work for. I guess I could call it "my company" or "the firm", but I don't consider it such. It's a building with walls where people with boobs and penises arrive in the morning, sit at their desks, eat lunch, mope around, then go home. Just to be clear, the people with boobs do not also have penises, to the best of my knowledge. When I use the term "boobs", I refer to the feminine version. A man has bitch-tits, not boobs. There really are so many word paths that people can erroneously walk down that you have to make sure we're all on the same page. I have never seen any of the penises. Nor the boobs for that matter, but you get a rough idea based on seeing someone in various forms of dress ona daily basis. I work with older people. It's not sexy environment. This really has gone off the mark.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I can do something otherworldly, like perhaps get to the point. I have none, and even if I did I fear I would be sitting here all day rife with word definitions as in the paragraph above. The problem with language is that everyone uses it at their disposal as opposed to how it's supposed to be used. Then again. perhaps there is no standard use. Hell, even the dictionary tends to have 3-10 meanings for every word. Sort of puts a damper on basic communication when you have so many ways to interpret a sentence. Without the added dimension of intonation and word stress, you are really left with nothing more than a guess as to what the writer's meaning actually is. Luckily, I have nothing pertinent to say.

Speaking of which, the English language takes an absolute beating in my work place. Whale Foot, as I like to call her, is the worst offender. Her Russian-English bark-an-expression is the sole reason I brought headphones to work. There, I have brought it semi-back to my point, since she will undoubtedly be there tomorrow.

Oh, but I digress, as I always do. I'm at paragrpah 4 which is as far as I want to let myself get with these blogs. Frogs. Hogs. The Trogs. Lou-E! Tomorrow is the 4th business day of the month, which means that I have to be there, such that if/when something goes wrong, I can prove it wasn't my fault. That's the way it goes there. If someone isn't there, it's going to get pinned on that person. Of course, it's never my fault because I'm surrounded by assholes, like Dark Helmet. I'm often able to point to where the fault lies, however.

Why I love baseball

Don't get me wrong, I hate baseball. It's a sport designed to keep people mentally occupied for enormous stretches of time during the summer. I'm not sure how you can sit down and watch a baseball game on TV and expect to get much of anything out of it other than a passage of your time from A to B. With so many games on TV these days, I imagine you'd go insane. So be it, if that's what you want.

But really, why do I love baseball? I don't. On the way to work the other day I walked past a coffee house and some kid had a Kansas City Royals baseball cap on. As a kid growing up, naturally I hated the Royals, since I'm a Yankess fan. George Brett and pine tar and all that. The Royals were the enemy to be sure. So why should I see a Royals hat and declare that I lvoe baseball?

When it's 8 degrees outside - or whatever it was - you see the "KC" on the hat and fondly look towards spring. For me, it doesn't look forward to baseball so much as it looks forward to the warm weather, the biking I'll do this spring, or being able to go outside without taking 45 minutes to bundle up enough to not lose my fingers and toes after 10 minutes. As I get older, I dislike winter more and more. Sitting in the house has its charm, but not much of it. Sitting outside and battling the mosquitos also holds charm, albeit very short lived. Still, the choice of where to sit is very important. And I'm looking forward to that choice. I can't wait for this snow to melt.

How many lives did your last spreadsheet change?

One: my own. The last spreadsheet I wrote/created was for my newfound music habit. I use the expression "newfound music habit" because nothing I do is ever simple, so I need to give appropriately weight to this procedure by referring to it in an overly elaborate manner. By using a three word description instead of simply labelling it Music, it better imparts to myself the movement I have begun. To add briefly, the movement includes purchasing an iShuffle and an almost religious devotion to the All Music Guide to Rock. Additionally, my headphones have been brought to work permanently and I have started using my wife's iPod in the gap created by a shortage of iShuffles and my currently waiting for it to ship. The spreadsheet includes a list of bands I want to explore and an average price guide for CDs I have recently bought. BMG has emerged as the clear leader.

The reason today's blog is named such is because I saw this expression on a subway advertisement this morning. The idea was to minimize the importance of your job and maximize your drive to become a teacher. My thought to this was to write a small entry on a guy who recently drew up a spreadsheet in an effort to cut costs, and in the process ended up laying off 14 people. His answer would be a little more hard hitting than mine, as mine really only delves into my own head and it's relationship to Michelle Shocked or King Crimson albums.