Ah yes, here we are again. Hey, it's been a solid week and I think and I've posted some random rot every single day. Some days twice. While I'd guess that this daily mental excrescence puts any random person who may be reading to sleep I have to admit that it has helped me put the days in focus. I have a horrible memory so I'd have already forgotten the story about the bathroom graffiti if not for the fact that it's right there in black and white. If I can keep this up for a year this'll be really cool to look back on. Anyway, more excrescence less meta-excrescence.
As I was pulling up the very last little bit of the linoleum today (you know, the bit in the corner that's always glued down and REALLY hard to get up) I was thinking about what to write about today. Conveniently, I remembered something that somebody said to me the other day and my mind wandered to how absurd a statement it was. They said that they didn't write in their blog because if other people at their place of work saw it there would be trouble. Not "I'm ratting out my friend who steals from work" type trouble but "if people at work see that I have free time to write in a blog they'll wonder why I'm not working more" type trouble. On hearing this initially I was somewhat flabbergasted. So basically, what the speaker was saying was that if he shows signs that he has any sort of a life outside work then that'll make trouble. Have we really fallen that far in this country? Are we all so addicted to 'getting ahead' that we can't do anything but work at our 104-hour a week jobs for fear others will think we're slackers?
Well if that's the case then that's just sad and I'm going to continue to blog quite inanely and voluminously for exactly the same reason. In fact... Hey! Look at me employer! Yeah, I work for you and look at this. I still have time to read a book EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Yeah. For HOURS and HOURS I do this. And I work in the garden. And, oh yeah, I use some of the money you give me to put new floors in my house. I wasn't so crazy with work that I couldn't handle what you give me AND do other things too! So HA to your crazy life-controlling scheme... ( well, or to the interpretation of your workers that in order to be a good employee you have to make trash of the rest of your life...)
And furthermore... you know what this means?!? Do ya? Well, for one thing it means that it's just possible I'll not go insane any time soon. It also means that I'll be a relatively OK employee for a lot longer than if I let you totally control my life with overwork! The funny thing is, that because I'm not constantly working I'll probably actually work more effectively. Some might even say to the point where you can't even TELL that I'm not working 102-hour weeks like the other people in the company who are all walking around with stressed-out and zombie-eyed expressions. So take THAT, oh companies who hate to see evidence that their employees have lives, and I'll see YOU tomorrow morning at 7:30a.m. ready to do whatever you tell me to but right now... I'm sharpening my saw... [the author would like to take this opportunity to wretch violently at this sad but necessary reference to 7-habits of highly effective people.]
"Rob?" you might say. "When you're not writing directionless missives to people who aren't really reading and to general concepts like 'employers' what DO you do with all your time?" I'm glad you asked that. Today marks the end of Little Women (or at least the text proper) and I'll admit in the realm of happy sugarplum fantasy this is quite a tasty morsel. But, since this little tome is on the 'Norton Critical Editions' side of the infinite reading TODO list the real text is only half the story and now we move on to the 'critical' part. It is positively FASCINATING to read what Alcott herself thought of the book. If you've been reading along you'll remember the episode in which Jo is writing 'sensational' literature to make some extra money and later in a fit of guilt burns her manuscripts. Despite its commercial success, Alcott thought her own novel was a bit of sensational tripe and referred to it as 'her stupid little book.' We also hear about some of the fan mail she received from adoring fans begging to know what would happen in the second volume of the novel. It's all very J.K. Rowling as she describes it. She further laments the need to bow to her publisher's wishes and 'marry off' her characters to close the book but declares categorically, "I won't marry Joe to Laurie to please anyone" so at least some of her artistic integrity is intact. Lastly, the text illustrates the clear point that you write nothing so well as what you've actually lived through and this, for Alcott was largely an autobiographical novel. Nothing else was as close to life or met with such commercial success for her.
And finally, today's mental yoga for those so inclined... "The good doctor, in spite of his powerful philoprogenitiveness and proclivity for didactic homily, found his children to be sad disappointments. His eldest turned out to be a nerdy hobbledehoy who always played victim to his scrapegrace of a younger brother."
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