I've got to admit it's getting better

Today was close. Tomorrow should be full speed.

I did some work on my junk today. I have a lot of junk, and today I worked on weeding out the grade-A, useless junk and leaving the kind-of-neat/useful junk. I've realized a certain trait runs in the family, however. I, like my father, have a drawer full of various wires and cables and electronic doodads that I haven't used in years. I'm not even sure what some of these wires and cables and doodads are actually for. But I don't want to get rid of them because, what if I find the device that requires this particular doodad, and I am no longer able to use said device? Yeah. I know. It's lame. If I haven't used it in so long that I don't remember what it's for, I probably don't need to keep it. And I won't. There's just this little bit of a nag inside of me saying, 'You'll regret this. That thing could prevent World War III.'

While going through my junk, I came across my copy of The Adventures of The Stainless Steel Rat (a collection of three of the SSR books). I've decided I'm going to take a hiatus from reading Roth's The Human Stain so that I can reread the SSR books. I have this love/hate relationship with Roth and most of his work. First off, he has truly mastered the language. He really understands the intricacies of words and which word of the handful with similar meanings is the best to convey whatever he is trying to convey. I wish I had a lexicon like his. Also, he really gets behind his characters. I get the feeling that he loves his characters a great deal. Unfortunately, for me, his love of his characters and his love of his language often seem like a self-congratulatory egostroke. I concede that there is an above-average amount of arrogance in virtually every writer. After all, the whole act of pursuing authorship as a career requires one to be a bit full of one's self: 'I have something in my head that is so mind-blowingly amazing that I must put it on paper so that other people may read it and put it into their heads, thus blowing their minds as well.' But Roth seems to go even beyond the usual author wankery. I mean, do I really need to read a couple of pages reflecting on the sensual carnality of cows? Also, at one point Roth forced into the mix a character/device that had no business being there. Then, after the incident, it was as if he felt bad about having done this and forced in a short justification for his actions a la Dickens in his infamous tying up of every loose end in every story he ever wrote.

Heh. Maybe I should call this blog, "The Procrastinator Wastes Other People's Time As Well As His Own." That was a lot of text just to say that I'm going to stop reading the book I'm currently reading, and start reading a new one.

But yeah, most of my achievement for today revolved around junk. I did walk on the treadmill. Tomorrow I should be back to a run.

I'm grateful for Harry Harrison (20).