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Too unnerving an idleness

I feel guilty when I don’t manage to write for a day or so. It’s not like there’s a massive audience hanging on my every post, but I get mad at myself when I fall out of the habit of offering up at least a daily snippet of my psyche.

Yesterday, I was pretty swamped with work and bad work-vibes. This morning, I decided to read some Montaigne rather than engage in my usual routine of scanning through the 400 or so items in my RSS reader. I’m pretty close to finishing Book Two of the essays and, while I don’t feel as though I’m in a race, I did find the final three essays pretty compelling and complementary: Of three good women (pp. 683-690), Of the most outstanding men (pp. 690-696), and Of the resemblance of children to fathers (pp. 696-725).

I’ll try to write about them this weekend (I’m still working on the last one), but I’m traveling to Atlanta on  Sunday for a conference, so I may have to pare back. Regardless, M. managed to help me get over my guilt with his intro to Of the resemblance . . .:

This bundle of so many disparate pieces is being composed in this manner: I set my hand to it only when pressed by too unnerving an idleness, and nowhere but at home. Thus it has built itself up with diverse interruptions and intervals, as occasions sometimes detain me elsewhere for several months.

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I do have plenty of halfassitude

Sorry I didn’t post anything today; I was swamped at work, trying to get our “Live from the conference” e-mail together for the show we’re attending next week.

I’m sorry: that’s bitchassness. And we’re in a No Bitchassness zone:

My bad.

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Can’t start a fire

I meandered around a Borders store for the second time in a week! This time, my wife was getting her hair cut on Saturday afternoon, and I figured I could spend a little time among the books to feel guiltier about not participating in National Novel-Writing Month. (I really meant to, but my paralyzing neuroses reminded me that I needed to clean the garage last weekend. . .)

While I looked at some of the recent releases, a woman walked up to me and asked, “May I show you the Sony eBook Reader?” She held the device between us.

I got over my momentary puzzlement — I thought I’d turned my “mood of revulsion” force field on — and said to her, “Actually, I already have an Amazon Kindle.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s our competition.”

“I know. I love the design of the Sony, but the Kindle’s wireless access to Amazon’s store and the book-samples sealed the deal for me,” I told her.

We thanked each other and as she walked away I noticed that there was a Sony eBook Reader kiosk nearby. Since it appeared that Sony & Borders were collaborating, I thought that a great way for them to combat Amazon’s superiority in online retail would be to have e-kiosks in Borders stores, where people could plug in their Sony eBooks and buy/download titles while in the store. Of course, the kiosks here were just holding a couple of eBook Readers.

At home that evening, I checked out Sony’s eBook online store, to see how it measured up to the Kindle store (which is integrated with Amazon). I scrolled down the Sony storefront, I noticed this banner for some available books:

Just to make the obvious and crude joke: Deepak Chopra’s Jesus is caught between the Decadent Duke and Swallowing Darkness.

Well, who am I not to click through Swallowing Darkness (uh-huh-huh-huh . . .), I thought?

That’s when I discovered that you can’t actually buy a title for the Sony eBook through the eBook store website; you need to have the eBook Library Software installed on your computer. And that software? It’s not available for the Mac, so Mac users can only load PDFs and public domain books on it.

Just so that’s clear: Sony’s biggest advantage over the Kindle is elegance of design, but Mac users — who tend to put a premium on elegance of design — aren’t able to buy books for it.

Bang-up job there, Sony.

BONUS: And that Sony/Borders partnership? It yields this great and useless website, which only has two active links: one for that library software and one for a promo to get 100 free “classic” titles, with purchase of an eBook Reader . . . by Sept. 30.

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Monday Morning Montaigne: Defense of Seneca and Plutarch

No rambling exegeses this week. Instead, you get a couple of passages from Montaigne. The first comes from his Defense of Seneca and Plutarch:

We must not judge what is possible and what is not, according to what is credible and incredible to our sense. . . . It seems to each man that the ruling pattern of nature is in him; to this he refers all other forms as to a touchstone. The ways that do not square with his are counterfeit and artificial. What brutish stupidity!

For my part, I consider some men very far above me, especially among the ancients; and although I clearly recognize my inability to follow them with my steps, I do not fail to follow them with my eyes and judge the powers that raise them so high . . . I well see the method which the great souls use to raise themselves, and I wonder at their greatness. And the flights that I find very beautiful, I embrace; and if my powers do not reach them, at least my judgment applies itself to them very gladly.

The next is from The Story of Spurina, which explores our physical and mental lusts and then relates the tale of a beautiful young man who decided to disfigure himself to avoid inflicting desire upon others. M. condemns this action as unwise, because desire is only one sin: “What is his ugliness later served to cast others into the sin of scorn and hatred or of envy for the glory of so rare a merit, or of calumny, interpreting this impulse as a frantic ambition?”

He goes on to tell us how, to quote Annie Lennox, “Dying is easy / It’s living that scares me to death”:

Those who evade the common duties and that infinite number of thorny and many-faceted rules that bind a man of precise probity in civil life, achieve, in my opinion, a fine saving, whatever point of especial rigor they may impose on themselves. It is in a sense dying to escape the trouble of living well. They may have some other prize; but the prize of difficulty it has never seem to me they had, nor do I think there is anything more arduous than keeping oneself straight amid the waves and rush of the world, loyally repsonding to and satisfying every part of one’s charge.

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What It Is: 11/10/08

What I’m reading: Finished The Spy in the Ointment last week, and haven’t started anything new, although I dip into “Have You Seen . . . ?” occasionally.

What I’m listening to: Ten Short Songs About Love, by Gary Clark.

What I’m watching: Tried Sweeney Todd, but got bored.

What I’m drinking: Wet by Beefeater G&Ts, but I picked up some Plymouth this weekend. While I was at the liquor store, I noticed that an allegedly high-end gin — New Amsterdam — I was wary of when I first saw it a few months ago is now on sale for the rotgut price of $18.99 for 1.75 L. If you’re at the same price point as Gordon’s and Gilbey’s, you are officially a cheap-ass gin, regardless of your stylish packaging.

What Rufus is up to: Another greyhound hike in Wawayanda, with a post-hike feeding frenzy!

Where I’m going: Atlanta next week for the AAPS meeting. I’m hoping to meet up with some friends from grad school while I’m down there, but that’ll entail blowing off a biz-type dinner at some point.

What I’m happy about: My wife is still alive in the NFL Loser pool that I flunked out of in its first week. Oh, and greyhound racing got banned in Massachusetts!

What I’m sad about: That I haven’t taken care of my mammoth landscaping plans or gotten a fence put in the backyard yet.

What I’m pondering: Jesse Jackson – crocodile tears or just a moment without charlatanry? The question is moot!

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A Quantum of Risk

There’s an article in yesterday’s NYTimes about how risk models as used by finance companies fail to account for human behavior. It’s nothing new, but it’s worth a read, especially because it includes a quote that should go up on every investor and business-owner’s wall:

If you are making a high return, I guarantee you there is a high risk there, even if you can’t see it.

— Richard R. Lindsey, president, Callcott Group