Syllabus #196

The word of the week is hubris.  I flew too close to the sun, thinking I could go out on the town and stay up late in the middle of the week, with no consequences.  100% worth it to have our oldest and greatest friends visit and show them a good time, East Nashville style.  But, one wild Tuesday night* has reminded me that I am a mere mortal, with an apparently precarious immune system, just teetering on one Jenga block, ready to topple at the slightest breeze from a child coughing in my face.  

*All I did was stay up late!  Had I been drinking, hoo boy.  I'd probably still be hungover.  I'm so fun!  Invite me to your next party!

Love - the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket

---

Sunday's Wordle was apparently puzzle #666.  My first guess was SATAN, which was NOT on their word list.  Like, bro, you accepted CHODE that one time, but you won't take SATAN?  So my alternate first word was DEVIL, which was also not the word.  I guess they stopped pulling their thematic bullshit after everyone threatened to burn them at the stake for using FEAST on Thanksgiving, but I consider this a real missed opportunity.

Everything about this article on the Finnish approach to happiness checks out.  They're not an exuberant people.  They're practical - as one Finn states, "We don't whine, we just do." Perhaps this is where I get my defensive pessimism.  If you don't expect much in the first place, you're unlikely to be disappointed and maybe you'll even be pleasantly surprised. 

These book assemblages are beautiful, but as a librarian, my sphincter clenches whenever I see books arranged according to aesthetics rather than logic.  All y'all influencers can peddle your Pinterest-worthy rainbow bookshelves as long as you send me some cash to pay for therapy.  It's the least you can do just for making me think about how difficult it would be to find anything in that collection.  

Ok this lady lived in a cave for 500 days, on purpose, which, with the current state of the world, sounds solidly aight.  But my question for her is - you had 500 days of total isolation in an actual cave, with no chores to do or job to go to, and you managed to read only 60 books?  The article makes that out to be an accomplishment, too.  Lady, that's cute, I read more books than that last year and I had a job and full-on docket of grownup shit to do.  Don't come at me with arguments about the logistics of having more books in the cave, or light by which to read them.  I've got solutions for all of it.

 

In praise of walking:  "The travel writer and scholar Patrick Leigh Fermor put it succinctly when he said, 'All horsepower corrupts.'"

Analog Reading:

Last Sunday, I finally finished The Intuitionist.   I respected it, but it was not my favorite.  

Now I'm halfway through The Ice Storm by Rick Moody.  It's interesting to read this close on the heels of the Rabbit tetralogy, given that the father figure, Ben Hood, is of the same age cohort as Harry Angstrom.  Set in 1973, this book falls chronologically between Rabbit Redux and Rabbit is Rich, and turns the lens towards upper middle class New Englanders grappling with the discontent of middle age and the sad, awkward attempts of these Square Olds to appropriate sexually liberated youth culture.