Douchebag McGee, the Quran-burnin' "pastor"

I try not to be a blind re-poster, but this is the most damned sensible thing I’ve read in a while.  It’s the kinda thing I wish I’d had time to sit down and write myself.

I don’t always agree with Jason Linkins’ stuff on the Huffington Post, but I dig his style and I’m with him 100% on this whole “Ground Zero Mosque/Burn a Quran” nonsense.  Check it out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/10/this-is-how-the-media-wor_n_712229.html

For those looking to kill a bit of time online and learn some cool things, read on.

Let’s start with a little language thing that, hopefully, explains the title of my post:

“Rhizomatic” is an adjectival form based on the word “rhizome.”  Rhizome is a botanical term, defined by the Oxford American dictionary as “a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.”

Wikipedia‘s pretty helpful in understanding that term better, but for now just know that ginger is an example of an underground rhizome. It sends out roots and shoots from its nodes.  Usually these are sent creeping out underground.

One of the cool things about rhizomes, especially for farmers and flower-growers, is that rhizomatic plants can be multiplied by a process called “vegitative reproduction.”  That means, you can chop a piece of a rhizome off, plant it, and it’ll grow into a new plant.  How cool is that?  According to wikipedia, you can do this with plants like ginger and asparagus and flowers like irises and lilies-of-the-valley, and certain kinds of orchids.

Meanwhile, this term “rhizome” also has crept (that’s a pun, see?) into philosophical and theoretical discussions of culture, primarily because of the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who discussed it in their two-volume study Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

They borrow the botanical concept to discuss different ways of understanding things and theorizing about things.  Rhizomes shoot out in all directions and connect in interesting ways.  You can examine a part of one of the shoots and see where it connects and branches out into other things.

Deleuze and Guattari contrast “rhizomatic” with “arborescent” thinking.  And “arborescent,” of course, is a reference to a tree-like structure.  See, trees have a bunch of underground roots, too, but they’re connected upward to a tree.  It’s a linear, hierarchical structure.  Roots go down, tree goes up, and most people focus on the tree, not the roots.

By contrast, rhizomatic thinking focuses on how all the creeping roots grow outward into a tangle of roots, each of which, in itself, can become an entirely new thing.  So, those two French theorists use this basic botanical metaphor in talking about how we study culture.  Here’s a lovely bit of wikipedia writing about this whole thing:

As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the originary source of “things” and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those “things.” “A rhizome, on the other hand, “ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.” Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.”

Still with me?

Postmodern theorists dig this concept as a way of highlighting the differences in structure between modernist works and postmodernist works. In Postmodernism for Beginners,  an awesome graphic novel-esque overview of postmodernism, author Jim Powell talks about how the ideas of sampling, parody, and pastiche–all of which are popular postmodern “strategies”–are examples of the rhizomatic nature of postmodern culture.  Rather than follow a straight-forward, linear, hierarchical pattern toward a single idea like more traditional narratives do, postmodern narratives–like rhizomes–often branch out in multiple ways simultaneously, touching on or quoting other works, digressing along separate paths, connecting to other ideas, and sometimes, but not always, reconnecting with the original root stalk at some point.

So this is sort of how I experience the internet.  You too, maybe.  I find one thing and I click on it.  This leads to another thing, tangentially related to the first thing.  Then I click another link, which takes me somewhere else, and so on and so on.  After several hours of clicking and following links in a non-linear way I suddenly find myself reading about something and have no idea how I got there.

So, for instance, how did reading my Facebook news feed, for instance, end up killing two hours and land me on a page about vegitative reproduction of sympodial orchids and then writing a blog post of my own about Rhizomes?  Here I am, taking a root stalk and generating a new, tangled-up entity.  There is a connection to the original “node,” of course, but it’s hard to follow.  (Like much postmodern narrative is, right?)

So here’s the pattern:

1. I taught at a college in California for a while and met a bunch of students.

2.  Some of them were friends with a guy I don’t think I ever had in one of my classes, but he was a cool guy.  (That guy, in this case, is Jeff Lepine.  He has a website called mindblowingwonderfulness.com).

3.  Somewhere I added him as a friend on Facebook, so he occasionally pops up in my FB news feed.  Like today, for instance.  He was announcing a cool theatre thing.

4.  So I follow his FB post to his FB page.

5.  I look under his Info tab to see where’s he’s at currently.

6.  I discover his aforementioned website.

7.  On said website, he has re-posted a thing from another blog: Hyperbole and a Half.  I read that re-posted thing and find it hysterical, so…

8.  I click over to that site.  There, I read a bunch of other posts and their “About” page, which is awesome and involves unicorns.  Which makes me think of Emily, who likes unicorns and writes for a gossip blog called Evil Beet.  So I check in on her blog and discover…

9.  Emily recently wrote a post about George Clooney and his hatred of Facebook.

(See how this rhizome has already circled back to “Facebook” again?)

10.  While looking at Emily’s blog, I remember how she once gave one of my posts a shout-out in one of her posts.

11.  That post of hers had such an impact on my blog’s traffic that I wrote a blog post about it.  To this day, I still get more hits on that Justin Bieber post than anything I’ve posted.

12.  Thinking about that made me realize I haven’t posted in a while and I should probably put something quick up here.

13.  So, here I am.  This all started cuz Jeff posted a thing about theatre on his Facebook status.  And now I’m talking about Justin Bieber gossip.

AND that, my dear readers, is an example of RHIZOMATIC AWESOMENESS.

And, scene….

Hot back in the 1970s...in a 1970s kind of way

Here’s the best overheard snippet of real-life dialogue I’ve heard in a while.

“I’m not going to join a fucking religion just because they have hot chicks.  They’d lock me up in some temple and you’d never see me again.”

So sayeth the maintainance man from my apartment complex to his co-worker as a gaggle of young Mormon missionaries drives away in a minivan. 

I have to say, I’m not convinced he was in danger of being made a Latter Day Sex Slave.  Nonetheless, I can’t fault his logic.  Joining a religion in hopes of nailing a cute college-aged girl is probably a bad idea, especially if you’re a married middle-aged maintenance man with very dirty fingernails.

On the other hand, there’s this:

Hot Mormon Muffins

Get your “Hot Mormon Muffins” Calendar at their website.

I don’t even know if I could explain why, but there’s something about those crazy-in-love Alaskans that just fascinates me.  Perhaps it’s because I despise them, pity them, and find myself vaguely attracted to them—all in almost exactly equal measure.  Isn’t that what makes people watch reality shows in the first place?  That combination is powerful.  I don’t know why, but I want to want to give them a hug, punch them in the mouth, and have hot sex with them…in no particular order, or perhaps simultaneously.  Is that weird?  Is it just me?

Yeah, okay.  It’s probably just me.

Anyway, so they were on the outs for a while, you know.  Levi was saying horrible things about Bristol’s mom (She Who Must Not Be Named), hanging out with Kathy Griffin, and hiding his candy in Playgirl photo shoots…then all of a sudden, BAM!  He starts apologizing for things he said about Grizzly Mom.

Rumors were circling around Alaska about a possible reunion.  Later Bristol explains they’d been hanging out a little—you know, for the sake of their son with the weird name.  They went for a walk together.  Then, after he left, Levi texted her these 13 magical words: “I miss you.  I love you.  I want to be with you again.”  Swoony, huh?  Isn’t he a dream date?

Reader, they were engaged a mere two weeks later…apparently deciding it best to announce it in Us Weekly before telling Mama Bear because Bristol said she found the idea of telling her mother the news “intimidating and scary.”  I have no comments on that sentiment.  None at all.

Voldemom, of course, reacted to the news with effusive love and support and encouragement.  She released a statement to the media showering congratulations on the happy young couple.  It read: “Bristol at 19 is now a young adult. We obviously want what’s best for our children. Bristol believes in redemption and forgiveness to a degree most of us struggle to put in practice in our daily lives.”  Don’t you wish your moms were so supportive and caring?

Of course, I’m not convinced that Bristol-Levi 2.0 will work better or last longer than the first version did.  But I’m really pulling for them.  And, again, I have to say I don’t really know why.  I mean, Bristol didn’t win any points with me for going on a speaking tour talking about abstinence shortly after becoming the country’s most popular unwed mother for a while back during the last presidential campaign.  None of the interviews I’ve seen with either of these kids left me impressed with their class or intelligence, two traits I generally tend to look for in people.

Perhaps that’s where the “pity” part of my reality-show emotion trifecta comes in.  I kinda think they’re just dumb kids who, if it weren’t for big-money politics, would’ve been able to play out their Springeresque drama in the privacy of their own trailers.

They were thrown into the spotlight.  Rather than shrink from it, however, they bloomed into fame-seeking publicity whores.  That’s where the “despise” part of the equation comes in.

As for the third part of the equation:  Levi cleaned up pretty good for the Republican National Convention, didn’t he?  And I don’t know what Bristol’s been doing, but on the cover of Us Weekly she kinda looks bitchy-hot in that early-1990’s Shannon Doherty way.  But I digress.

What’s most fascinating to me is the speculation that has come from the announcement of these crazy kids’ engagement.

AOL News (which I didn’t really know existed), posted what it calls the “definitive” timeline tracing the history of the Bristol-Levi relationship.

Newsweek dove right into a political analysis of the engagement:

“Before his apology, Johnston was (obviously) a loose cannon who made the Palins look bad with his tell-all inside look at the Palin house — even though some of his claims were apparently false (though Johnston hasn’t said which ones). And the fact that Palin had an unwed teenage daughter with a baby didn’t help her — indeed, there were allegations that the original Johnston-Palin engagement was a shotgun affair to save face — but now she can again play up the “happy family” image that’s served her well.”

But the really juicy stuff appeared just where I thought it would: on the message boards of the Fox News website.  The story of their engagement appeared on the “Entertainment” blog of the Fox News site rather than on the Politics page.  Hmm.

(Semi-digression:  When I searched the Fox News site to see where they posted info about Chelsea Clinton’s upcoming wedding—you know Chelsea, right?  She’s the politician’s daughter who didn’t get knocked up at 17 and then do a speaking tour about abstinence—I had difficulty finding stories about it.  The first thing I found was a headline: “Chelsea Clinton to Wed at Ritzy New York Venue?”  Then there was an invitation to submit your hilariously photoshopped images for their “Photo-Opinion” feature.  Here’s the pitch:  “Chelsea Clinton will wed later this month. Oprah and President Obama both plan to attend. Show us what you think the wedding might look like.”  I’m sure that’ll produce some good conservo-comedy.  After that one, the most recent Chelsea Clinton story involved Fox’s criticism of MSNBC’s David Shuster for saying something in February 2008 about Hillary “pimping out” her daughter during the campaign.)  Damn that David Shuster!  Too bad he didn’t follow the Fox News policy of never saying anything bad about a Clinton!

Anyway, here are some of the best comments and theories I read from contributors to the Fox News Entertainment blog story about Bristol and Levi.  (I didn’t edit any of the grammar or spelling.)

1.  Levi is untrustworthy AND evil liberals are paying him to worm his way back into the Palins’ lives so he can collect dirt on Mama Bear.

• (a) from dizzykitty: “I want to know what left-wing organization is paying this idiot to crawl back into the Palins’ lives? Think about it. 2012 elections are just around the corner. He can’t be trusted.”
• (b) from David: Levi Johnston is most likely a plant from the left to get into the Palin family and collected some dirt on Sarah Palin for the next 2 years. Sarah, don’t let your guard down.”
• (c) from anniep: “I’d be looking for hidden cameras and mikes at family dinners. This sounds like a Rahm Emanuel set up to me.”

2.  There’s something fishy going on and it involves babies.

• (a) from Annieluc: “Bristol is about 3 months pregnant now. Rumors in Alaska have been around for weeks. So much for her abstinence role model job…”
• (b)  from lowhandy:  “I think that a trip to the Maury show is in order… THE KID HAS BLUE EYES AND BLOND HAIR AND DOESN’T LOOK LIKE DADDY!!!!!!!!!”
• (c)  from Confused: why does this baby look nothing like either of them. Theres more than just one thing fishy about this whole scenario.”

3.  Let God Sort it Out

• (a) from G.M.C.: “They are a family that has such a committed Christian attitude. Her mother and father can now say how thankful they are that their prayers have been answered. God Bless them and the Palins!”
• (b) from Ariel “If your parents aren’t happy with you getting married to a person, it’s a sign that God doesn’t want it to happen. Just because you had a baby with someone doesn’t mean to should marry them.”
• (c) from ChristianMother: “God forgives us–we can forgive each other. While the eyes of this sinful world judge them, God knows what’s in their hearts. God bless this young couple and their beautiful baby boy.”

4.  It’s all a hoax by the far-left media because they’re just trying to “refudiate” the Holy Hockey Mom.

• (a) from Gina0227: “This story can’t be real, probably a Lame-stream media hoax. That photo of Bristol and Levi is fake. I wish the media would stop attacking Sarah Palin. She’s a great mother and this is a lie.”
• (b) from Irisheyes: “I agree Gina0227. If this was real, it would be all over the news and it’s NOT. Sarah is a great mother and very smart and scrares the LIBS to death. LIBS don’t have anyone that smart.”
• (c) from Ron: “This will be another reason for the libs to attack Sarah Palin. They already hate her because she is smart,pretty and believes in God.She also knows how to balance a budget. Dems cant do that.”

5.  Levi’s only marrying her so he doesn’t have to pay child support anymore.

• (a) from suzanne: “Levi couldn’t make it in Hollywood, spent his money, didn’t want pay child support, so now he’ll marry Bristol and live off of her. What a loser, Bristol, love is blind.”
• (b) from jasbr: “now that Levi won’t have to pay child support, maybe he’ll stop selling his stories to the the tabloids.”
• (c) from JCZK: “After all he did to that family, she’s going to be legally tied to him now? He ran out of money. A person can say “I love you…I miss you” and not mean it when $ signs are all they see.”

Ain’t love grand?

I never thought Mel was a genius actor or director, but he did some stuff I appreciated.  Braveheart was pretty good, I liked The Patriot well enough, and the Lethal Weapon movies are pretty good representatives of their genre.  I didn’t even think his Hamlet was as bad as some of my friends did.  But the more I hear about what an unrepentant thug he is and how racist, misogynist, homophobic and anti-semitic he is, the more I wonder whether I’d be doing something wrong by going to see one of his movies.

I think I can typically separate an artist from his or her work.  I know, for instance, August Strindberg was a raging monster, but still, Miss Julie is a damned good play and I kinda like his expressionist paintings.  I don’t like the fact that Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl, but that fact doesn’t make Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, or The Pianist bad films, does it?  I don’t think the artist’s conduct necessarily influences the aesthetic impact of his/her work, but I still wonder exactly how guilty I should feel about renting one of those movies or seeing one of his new ones in a theatre.  Am I supporting a man whose behavior I find repellant?

And is it really “his behavior” or that one particular instance of bad behavior?  I haven’t seen any evidence that Polanski has been a serial child rapist since his initial arrest back in 1979.  So does that make it okay now?  How many 13 year old girls can you rape before it starts to really hurt your reputation?  More to the point—and this is a question for myself as much as for my readers—what kind of personal miscreantism has to happen before I decide to stop supporting their work?

Of course, this isn’t purely an artistic concern.  There are still apparently hundreds of thousands of people who support John McCain and Newt Gingrich (who abandoned their seriously ill wives for other women), just as hundreds of thousands supported Ted Kennedy after he allegedly drove a woman off a bridge in Chappaquidick and left her to drown before calling the cops.  Bill Clinton still commands huge audiences despite lying about having sex with Monica Lewinsky.

Ted Haggard just opened a new church in Colorado, and people are attending it…even after he was exposed as a hypocrit, a drug user, and a closet case.  Millions of people, including Mel Gibson, still support the Catholic Church even though ample evidence has suggested the leadership of the church took part in covering up the molestation of children.  Yet many Catholic parents still want their kids to be altar boys.

Likewise, people still turn out to see Tiger Woods play golf even though they don’t like his serial philandering, and there are thousands of people who think Pete Rose should be able to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame even after he was declared permanently ineligible to play the game because he gambled on games.  Is Michael Vick any better or worse an athlete because he was convicted of dog fighting?

Can you like the work and hate the worker?  I think you can.  I have to admit, I kind of like some of Hitler’s paintings.  That’s a horrible thing to say, right?  If Hitler were alive today, though, I don’t think I’d be willing to buy a painting from him.  Is that hypocritical or hyper-moral?

When I was a kid, I remember always asking my parents to let me stay up just a little bit longer. Half an hour so I could watch the part of the Charlie Brown special past that went past my bedtime, 15 minutes so I could finish the game I was playing, however long it would take Santa to show up…. I wanted to stay up later. I wanted my bed time pushed further and further into the night. I bargained my way out of bed.

Now I want back all those begged minutes of postponed sleep that I lost. I could use them now. I want my mom to tell me to stop what I'm doing immediately and go to bed, lights out, no fooling around.

[Here’s a guest blog from my cat.  We just moved to an apartment in a new city, and he seems to have lots of opinions about the whole thing.  I did the transcription and translation, so any errors in the manuscript are my own.]

Okay, first of all, he didn’t even ask me if I was interested in moving.  He just tells me.  And it’s not like I didn’t figure it out by then anyway.  I mean, I saw him accumulating moving boxes in the corner of the dining room, and going through closets and the attic and basement throwing a bunch of stuff away.  But he doesn’t once ask how I feel about moving.  Well, for the record, I didn’t want to move.  I liked the old place.  Lots of room to run around, a nice cool basement to relax in when it got warm upstairs, and the whole outdoors thing.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Honestly I could tell something was up a while ago, even before the boxes.  I’m talking, like, back in early fall last year.  He was just extra emotional there for a while.  I don’t mean, like, weepy and sad or anything; more like cranky.  Or sometimes just blank.  He’d come back at 9:00 or so at night from whatever the hell he did all day and not even sit at the table doing the paperwork stuff I used to walk on.  He’d just show up, go to the computer for about five minutes, then bam—off to bed.  In the morning, he’d pick me up, give me a little half-hearted rub behind the ears and then let me outside right away.  So I could tell something was up.

But then about two weeks ago, everything got really freaky.  The first big sign was when—back in May I think this was—he brought all these boxes home in the car.  Like two or three trips worth.  And they were full.  Smelled like books to me.  He stacked ‘em up in the dining room where all the empty boxes were.  Then, suddenly, he was throwing more stuff out.  He’d have strangers over looking at stuff and sometimes leaving with it.  He set up boxes and then wander from room to room collecting stuff to put in them.  I tried to stay outside during this whole thing, partly to stay out of his way—cuz he got pissed when I’d climb in the boxes—but also because, honestly, I was sulking a little.  I mean, it’s one thing to not even bother asking me about moving; it’s another thing completely to not even mention it once it was patently obvious that’s what was happening.  For a while I wasn’t even sure if he was planning on taking me with him.  Which would be so like him.  I mean, I’ve worked with him for about five years now.  Ever since he hired me from that temp agency called the Kingsport Animal Shelter.  I’d be just like him not to even give me two weeks notice.  Okay, so maybe I’m being a little harsh.  The pay was good and he was mostly easy to manage, but still.  I guess I’m not too objective about the whole thing.

Right, so anyway, then the first of the big days happens:  he comes home in this big-ass truck and has a bunch of women and another guy over.  I get the hell out of there and hunker down across the street in the brush where that bitchy possum sometimes hangs out.  I can see the whole operation from there.  Just as I suspected, they’re loading stuff out of the house.  Hours later, the visitors leave, he jumps in the truck, and takes off without so much as a “see ya later.”

He’s gone for two days.  Yeah, don’t mind me.  I’ll just sleep outside with the skunks and whatnot.  Ass.

Then he comes back in the middle of the night and sleeps on the floor.  He packs some more stuff, and this time puts out some food for me.  I’m like, “Screw you, I’ll eat mice,” and I run out the door.  From my hiding spot under the neighbor’s tool shed, I can see he jump in the car and drive off again.

He’s back the next day this time.  With company, again.  This tall skinny guy who keeps whistling some irritating tune and a girl who seems nice enough, but doesn’t get that I’m not quick to make friends, particularly now, and, no, I don’t want to come say hello, thank you.  I hide in the basement while they putz around upstairs.  Those two take off, with some of our stuff, my client putters around for several more hours, then again falls asleep on the floor.

Next morning, the guy from the first moving day is back and they load a bunch of stuff in his little blue pick-up, bound for god-knows-where.  Can’t be too far, though, cuz they’re back in, like, an hour.  While they’re gone, I check out the house from the exterior window sills.  It’s empty.  His car in the carport is filled to overflowing, and that damn cage of his is sitting in the front seat.  You know, that cage that he always stuffs me in when he brings me to those assholes who fondle and poke and jab me with needles?  That one.  If he wants me to leave with him now, he’s gonna have to wait it out.

So I hide.  I’m not telling where, in case I need to use that place again sometime.  Meanwhile, Dumbass is wandering around the yard calling my name.  Screw that.  I’m not coming out yet.  Let him wait.

After about 45 minutes of this, he leaves.  He comes back with horrible food about half an hour later and proceeds to eat it off the roof of the car, standing there shoving trash in his mouth and looking around for me.  I almost thought he saw me once, but apparently not.  I’m stealthy like that when I need to be.

He sits on the side wall of the carport for, no kidding, like an hour and a half.  I wait it out.

Then he resorts to trickery, the bastard.  He rifles around in a box in the car and pulls out my kryptonite.  It’s those damn Pounce treats!  He knows I’m powerless against the sound of that canister being shaken.  I try to resist, but I just can’t.  I run over to get one, knowing it’s probably a trap, and sure enough, he grabs me, and shoves me in the cage.  That’s when he finally says it.  “Kitty,” he says, “we’re moving.”  He starts the car and off we go.

I scream and cry for the two hour drive, just to irritate him and let him know how pissed I am.

Then we get to this strange new place.  It’s crap.  Not nearly as much room, no basement, fewer windows to hang out in, and he got rid of the couch that I liked so much.  For some reason.  Still haven’t figured that out yet.  Oh, yeah, and get this.  He won’t let me outside now.  Ever.  Seriously?  I haven’t been an indoor cat since I was, like, two!  Come on.

I’m so over this whole relationship.  I’m planning on just crawling up inside his big recliner chair and sulking for a few days.  I might scratch some stuff up later.  Then I’ll nose around a little bit and act like I’m okay with it all.  Then I’ll probably piss on a few things just to remind him who’s in charge here.  It’s not much, but it’s the best plan I’ve got until I plot my escape.

[Editor's note:  As of tonight, Kevin has yet to scratch anything up and has dutifully used the litter box for all his excretory needs.  He seemed to calm down a bit after I unpacked a bunch of his toys and stuff.  He's currently lying on his back on the living room carpet, letting the air conditioning blow over his belly.]

When I moved out to Virginia from California, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying.  I was a bit nervous about lopsided Baptist-to-Hippie ratio.  I figured I might either need to skip town in the middle of the night, or be chased out by an angry mob wielding the proverbial pitchforks and torches.  Turns out neither happened; I lived in the same place for six years in a row, which set a new record for me.  (I moved a lot as a kid.)  But, yeah, so anyway, I saved most of my boxes when I moved here.  Half I put in my basement, half in my attic.  Alas, I didn’t take into consideration how damp and moldy my basement was, nor how many burrowing, gnawing little critters there would be in my attic.  So much for planning ahead.

So, I’ve been doing some box work lately–trying to air out some of the moldy ones, patch up some of the nibbled ones, and gather as many free used ones as possible.  Luckily I know people who work at places like Lowe’s and the college bookstore.  My dining room has become the staging area where I sort out all my boxes as I figure out what will go where.  It’s kind of a mess.  It looks a little bit like this:

Here’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned over the many, many moves I’ve made:  put heavy stuff in small boxes and light stuff in big boxes.  Part two of this lesson is:  BOOKS ARE HEAVY.

I have a lot of books.  And files.  And three-ring binders from classes and productions I’ve directed.  Oh, and academic journals and theatre magazines.  All of them are heavy.  I’ve sifted through my stuff and got rid of two big, black “lawn and leaf” style trashbags full of stuff already.  (No books, of course.  Just journals, magazines, term papers students never came to pick up, and photocopies of stuff I finally admitted to myself I could live without.)  After that great purge, here’s what I’ve got packed so far:

That’s 27 boxes.  I mean, the little one on the top left doesn’t really count since it’s really just all the crap I cleared out of the drawers from my office desk.  But still…that’s kind of a lot, right?

And I’m not done yet.  I still have more to pack.  Like this set of shelves in my living room:

Yeah, I also have books in two bedrooms, my study, my bathroom (yeah, I know), and even a few in my kitchen.  In fact, the only reason I’m writing this blog right now is that I needed a break from packing books into boxes.  I should get back to it.

Oh, and for the record, in case any of you digital generation kids out there are going to tell me I should get a Kindle or sell some of the books I don’t read anymore, lemme tell ya:  it’s not gonna happen.  I like how old books smell.  A little smoky, a little earthy, and just the teensiest bit like slightly moldy boxes.

I know it’s featured in every damn NYC film cliche, but I gotta tell ya, I’ll take the Chrysler Building any day of the week. The top of the Empire State Building looks like some kind of device an evil alien would use in a bad 1950′s sci-fi movie.