'Cause I feel Like It

Today? Came and is almost gone now. I am bone tired. I am dog tired. My eyes are closing. I wanted to say literally closing. Then got scared of sue. I don't know any more. Is it virtually closing or literally closing. Its one of those, I would know if said event were not happening to me as we speak. Or write. Or read. Or type.

I played the (internet) radio on my computer all morning while I read papers. The papers were real boring for the most part. It took me all the morning to find something interesting enough to be willing to cut a tree over. Don't cry dogmatix, its all for a good cause. Or not. The second I printed it (10 pages, used left over paper from last semester of course. All those tutorials belonging to kids that overslept in their rooms after a night of avid viewing of illegal movies), I lost interest in it.

Which reminds me that I read, over the course of my vacation, Catch 22 (again) and followed it up with Closing Time. Now, much like Show Business, which is a book I love to hate, Closing Time is, to put it mildly, PutDownAble (Yo Suester, Thats my peeve, the inventifying or massacrage of words. The verbing of nouns. Irregardless. Things like that). I mean, its such a sorry ass excuse of a second book, especially after the lyrical quality of Catch22. And besides, it makes only a passing glancing mention of Orr, by far my favourite character in C22.

So I was just saying that the best way to lose interest in a paper is to print it. But the only reason to print it is because it is interesting.

The Yossarian way would, of course, be to print every single document that passes through the veil, pile it all up till the room is fit to burst, go to admin and tell them I cannot enter my office, and go out and sleep with a few (or many or none) Italian whores. Sitting on my haunches and grinning wickedly, I could stuff horse chestnuts in my mouth (because crab apples are not in season, or rather, I wouldn't know what the fuck a crab apple is, even if you brought it on a platter with horse chestnuts around it, I would not recognise it), and not print anything, but pretend as if reading it on the screen is the most natural thing in the world. Then suddenly one day, poof! Sail away! Orr, middle path. In life also, of course, but here too.

Ok so, based on middle path treading over the past fifteen years in the biz, I have 11 boxes - splitting at the seams - of the white stuff (not the kind you are thinking of!) in my office. Not a bookshelf in sight either. It fills about 13% of the room currently. Long way to go Yo-Yo. Keep in mind that much of the mass is from early days, when PDF still referred only to Post Doctoral Fellow and one had to wear a down jacket, gloves, hat, and scarf, walk into library, take off down jacket, gloves and scarf, pull down the dusty bound volume (s), hotfoot to the basement with the machines, use gym-developed muscles to turn the bound volume upside down on the glass and press down with vengeance on the cover, sweat, find the hat still on your head, take it off, do it again and again and hope you never run out of paper (which is what you had hoped, earlier in the morning, as you read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni sitting in the loo you shared with that weird white chick called White in the connected room), and wonder briefly if the associated basement-sweating counts as aerobic exercise at all, and oh well, you get the picture. Now you just click on a few things, right mouse up a few more things and within seconds you have the offending document all ready to be printed (or read, choose one), and no sweating even, how boring. To fill a room requires a lot of dedication. Or Rumplestiltskin (there are moments of course when this queen would gladly give away the first born to him to do as he pleases, this is not one such moment however. She has eaten her dinner, Oliver Twisted even, much to my incredible surprise. Has now proceeded up to her bed and is shooting questions at me about Tornados and Earthquakes and advising me against going to Kansas City because of).

Dinner ladies and, well, men. Dinner. In which we have featured today, Keerai - market bought, tomorrow we harvest our own, don't worry, and snake gourd - store bought and therefore nah-ha-sty in texture, taste, and colour. The paper meanwhile remains unread. I feel I should roll it up and put a rubber band around it. There.