Syllabus #167

It's a sick sad world

I love articles about new social phenomena that I never worried about before, but now make me question whether, I, too, have this manufactured problem.  Am I toxic?  What if I am?  How to does one detoxify, exactly?

For no real reason except aesthetics (what else is there?) I desperately wanted a Saab hatchback for my first car.  I found one for sale online, only to find out that the pictures, taken of only the driver side the car, concealed the fact that the passenger side was riddled with bullet holes.  Instead, I ended up with a whack-ass Saturn that belonged to a dead guy.  The car had been in a front-end collision that discharged the airbag, at which point the empty cavity in the steering wheel was stuffed with Shop Rite bags.  I should say that this accident wasn't why the guy was dead, and the car was, unfortunately, not haunted.

I've had this article about librarians fighting for intellectual freedom open in a tab since it was published in July, and I just can't force myself to read it because it hits too close to home.

Analog Reading:

Finished Either/Or by Elif Batuman.  I liked it, but towards the end there were an awful lot of date rapey situations that made me want to shake the protagonist and shout, "honey, you deserve better, and you also deserve pepper spray!"

Started A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.  Ehhh.  I really enjoyed The Lincoln Highway but this is the exact opposite.  Where TLH had the characters in constant motion by virtue of being a road novel, this one is pretty much a 1920s version of Edward Snowden, just a dude legally confined to never leave a luxury hotel in Moscow.  It's not really grabbing me, and is making me feel claustrophobic.