the pod bay door

Forgive me some random thoughts:

It’s an evening of mixed emotions, a draining day at work but one that reaffirmed my faith in being blessed to work with people who care about what they do. In other news, I’ve lost or misplaced a cheque for $60, and am angry at my own ineptitude – I had the cheque yesterday, and now it’s gone. Duh. Since my return from NYC, I’ve yet to work out, and am feeling frumpy. So I just ordered a pizza.

While I was in NYC, I checked my website on different computers, and was distressed to see how bad it looks on other browsers and machines. In two cases, the right-hand column moves itself to the left, over top of the blog entries. Keith has known this for a while; it will take me sometime to recode the site.

I’m fortunate to work with some great people, so when I returned to work, there was no anxiety about having a desk and an e-mail inbox full of paper and e-mails and books and memos and shyte. I survived the day, and am home, blitzed in the head. I won’t get back into my regular workouts for a couple more days (daze?).

Here’s an interesting essay from Pete Townsend on the future of The Who; thanks to Chris (brother) for bringing this one to my attention.

I want to put notice out that I agree with Geoff, and that he and I and many others blog because it’s fun, and for any other reasons that may emerge from the fun doing it, such as learning more code, improving one’s writing skills, sharing ideas and thoughts and comments, regardless of how useful or informative they might seem to someone else, meeting other bloggers, developing a new community of contacts and friends, whatevahdafuck, as Tony Soprano would say. The full essay to which Geoff refers is at Library Juice, and addresses the number of “wild librarian” sites that have appeared in the past few years. I don’t emphasize on my site that I’m a librarian per se, nor is my profession the focus of the site or the blog. It’s a pastime, a hobby, and as Geoff reminds me, a place to vent from time to time. So there. Nyah. Thpppppttt!

The subject of overload be it pop culture overload, media overload, information overload, whatever, is a topic of regular discussion among friends and family. Each year I swear I will limit, drastically, the number of television shows I will watch, in order to free up more time (to do other pop culture stuff?) Anyway, this fall I decided to continue to watch the 3 Law and Orders, West Wing, SNL, MAD-TV, Ebert & Roper, 24, and The Sopranos, and Sports Centre, as well as various sporting shows, bits of late night talk shows like Charlie Rose, The Daily Show, etc. (Aside: I lament the demise of the shows of Dennis Miller, Bill Maher and Tom Snyder (warning: bubble machine sounds), but life goes on.)

New shows I’d give a shot would be Robbery Homicide Division, Without A Trace, CSI: Miami, Presidio Med, Boomtown. Now, totalling up these shows w/o adding in the sports and talk shows, and you’ve got 13 hours of television. OK, add in more, and it’s probably up to 20 hours. I realized this, and immediately dumped Boomtown, CSI: Miami, and reluctantly, Presidio Med (I have an immense crush on Julianne Nicholson).

Still…that’s a lot of tv. Life is short. And I’m about to take another trip to NYC. Historically, I would leave and program my two VCRs to tape 12 shows while I was away. Now I’m thinking, what does it matter? So I’m setting up to tape The Sopranos, 24, and a few Law and Orders. Will pass on everthing else.

But this is just a small sample of the larger issue of total and complete pop culture overload.
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