The Beck and I both had 10 AM starts to our Saturday working days, so we got up early and... EXERCISED!!! I ran another three miles (in the rain, rendering my look ratlike), which brings me to 18 for the week, so 3 more tomorrow and I'll meet my goal of 21 per. Combined with the 13 I ran down in San Antonio, it seems that I have more than completed a marathon in just under two weeks. Sweet. Let it be known that I will never run a marathon (for real) ever. Screw that. I know a lot of people who have done it either to say that they have done it and/or to prove that they could do it. I *know* I could do it. That is how strong the faith in Nyet is, and I don't care if you doubt it; my attitude towards your opinion of my sanity is the same of Tom Cruise's - I don't care (minus several hundred million dollars, boyish good looks, oddly named baby, etc.). Really, I just don't want to sit in an ice bath up to my nether regions, which is surely what my knees would require in the event of a continuous 26.2. So don't hold yer breath.
So after the running, the showering, the shaving, the dog-walking and all, I went and tutored a couple of biology students in the wonders of aerobic respiration. Very sweet kids and families; definitely my favorite variety. From there it was a jaunt to Barnes and Noble to repair the same-gifting damage that Beck and I did one another for Christmas. I may or may not have returned the correct copy of What is the What and exchanged it for something that I hope will serve as an effective half-nyet-half-beck gift: The Best Non-Required Reading of 2006 (A Dave Eggers edited collection, appropriate I thought), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, White Noise by Dom DeLillo, and The Human Stain by Phillip Roth (though I've heard American Pastoral or Portnoy's Complaint is the real deal). So hopefully one of those will qualify as likable by Beck, and if not, well, I'll go vacuum dog-hair off the couch now.
So a successful venture to the bookstore, but I must say that place wigs me out. On the most blatant level, it's that the same building that contains the greatest novels "ever" also has very large displays upon displays of just utter celeb, pop or just low-blow culture junk. You stand in line holding a book on Foucault and the person behind you holds the Idiot's Guide to Tanning. Not there's anything wrong with Idiot's Guides or For Dummies; just the idea that the same place can converse in the basics of tanning and post-structuralist commentary seems, um, weird.
But the idiot's guide phenomenon actually gets at the core of why bookstores wig me out or, more exactly, why I consistently wig myself out by thinking about books while in bookstores. There's just too much to be had; too much information; too many lurking snakes whose words will do worse than sap your time and sap your brain. You obviously could not hope to conquer the whole of knowledge in there, nor would you want to (see the aforementioned guides to tanning and or biographies of Nicole Richie), but there is a powerful urge to conquer that which is important or meaningful, and the arrows towards these things point in so many directions as to make the "where to start" contemplation painful. There are other considerations; the philosophy section of books is half as big as the poetry section which is half as big as the romance novel section which is half as big as the business and money section. B & N is clearly within its rights and actually doing a smart thing by matching demand for books with supply (see shelves 5-8 of the money section), but there's a fundamental sadness in the "great" achievements low place on the demand totem pole. So I notice that i'm hanging out in front of philosophy and religion sections (note, of course, that i ended up buying popular fiction novels; I suck, I know), and find myself checking out the people who are either stopping to look or who are just gliding by, looking at them looking at me looking at them, wondering what they think about the weird dude looking at the weird heady books and then noticing that even the decision to peruse a book has so many social implications and really this all boils down to a choice of how to represent yourself to the world at large and or what your pursuits will ultimately be and wondering why, oh why, where has all the time gone and why aren't I better educated (though I am admittedly pretty good at Tecmo Bowl) even though I actually have read a bit and have some reasonably (I think) insightful things to say about the things I have read or seen but then I can't remember most of them so I should probably reread them now that I'm in a higher, or more elevated, or more mature (or maybe just closer to the present now) state of mind and it's all just a hopeless endeavor anyways seeing as there's such a vast depth of stuff that would all qualify as great or good depending who you ask and do you really want to go down as a categorical list of likes and dislikes, or should you bolster thyself and have something to say even if it is, by any reasonable definition, seriously underinformed given the my-good-god vast quantities of books, no, just the staggering number of words in this stores (not including the ones spoken, which at the cash register I swore I heard "I can help who that's next" over and over because the line was so long).
So yeah, bookstores = disorienting experiences. I don't have a very good grasp on a narrowed down version of what I like, being so broadly interested or whatever pleasantry you want to exchange for shallowly knowledgeable in a lot of areas, but I suppose I am getting there, creeping ever closer to the brink of having to choose lest the end be reached without a choice having been made. That would be a bummer. So for the now: a little modern philosophy, some contemporary American high-end fiction, and oh yeah, I'm gonna go watch some football now. That oughta cover it.
In the meantime, some links, and given my science v. religion post from yesterday, I'll throw up one funny atheistic site (it's a one line joke) and one long dialog featuring some classic religion v. philosophy insights:
The Official God FAQ
Jesus Meets Socrates
Paper Art Gallery
This is a seriously cool gallery I stumbled upon yesterday.
Jackson Pollock Paint Program
Check it; good for a few minutes of fun...
Double Maze Game
Russian double action maze game. Oddly soothing.
MIT OpenCourseWare
Mentioned this to the madre earlier today - MIT has put the syllabi, materials, assignments, some lectures, etc. online for FREE for 1400 of its courses. Other universities are jumping on the bandwagon as well. The future is now folks. Or it was then. Or something.
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