fare una passeggiata...
10.10.04
I went for a stroll downtown today. Spending a couple months with my computer as my exclusive companion finally took its toll. I'm exhausted and I'm supposed to be writing my midterm essay. I needed to escape the computer, or as my one brother calls it... my umbilical cord. This has turned out to be my weekend of library excursions... I hit up UVic yesterday with my COPL card and today I found myself at the GVPL.
It wouldn't be fair to say that I am avoiding writing my essay... this is not true... since I have already started my draft and in a sense I have been preparing for this composition for several weeks now. Still unemployed with an excess amount of time on my hands I have been doing just a few things with my time. My lonely days tend to progress as follows: I get up... look for something to eat... check my email... check the discussion boards... go for a walk... check my email and post to the discussion boards... and read from the multiple books I have on the go... I am currently (re)reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business which I happened to pick up last week from the one of the sale tables in Munro's Books for about six dollars. It's a lovely (an adjective I overuse... mental note to replace lovely with synonyms such as admirable, agreeable, captivating, charming, delectable, delicious, engaging, enjoyable...) book and is very relevant to the topic of my midterm essay about the vast wasteland of television and audience studies.
But on the subject of walks. I have always loved referring to strolls as my daily constitional. It suggests a purpose other than just escaping the cruelty of self-imposed computer work. I have many more years to serve of this sentence as a student and I will continue to try include a daily constitional as part of my schedule. I have returned to my pale winter state and a daily walk will also incorporate some vitamin D therapy as part of my SAD prevention campaign.
1 comments
Ooh, ex-leader of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, released an album inspired by that book entitled "Amused to Death". Check out this lyric from the song of the same title:
ReplyDeleteAnd somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out spied a flickering light -
Our last hurrah!
And when they found our shadows
Grouped around the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left:
This species has amused itself to deathQuite funny if it weren't so sad. Another book I highly recommend is Jerry Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred", in which he summarizes and expands upon his previous book, "10 Reasons for the Elimination of Television".