{"id":2085,"date":"2008-06-02T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2008-06-02T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2085"},"modified":"2008-06-01T21:32:51","modified_gmt":"2008-06-02T01:32:51","slug":"what-it-is-6208","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-6208","title":{"rendered":"What It Is: 6\/2\/08"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>What I&#8217;m reading:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1590200446?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1590200446\">D\u00c3\u00a6monomania<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1590200446\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, by John Crowley, and some comics by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=88&amp;Itemid=82\" target=\"_blank\">Jason<\/a>, the Norwegian cartoonist who&#8217;s currently doing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/ref\/magazine\/funnypages.html?_r=2&amp;oref=slogin&amp;oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\">1-pagers in the NYTimes magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m listening to:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00122ZAI2?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00122ZAI2\">5:55<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00122ZAI2\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, by Charlotte Gainsbourg.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m watching:<\/em> The third season of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000FTCLSU?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B000FTCLSU\">The Wire<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000FTCLSU\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000035Z3C?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B000035Z3C\">Bowfinger<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000035Z3C\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m drinking:<\/em> Cherry Coke. It was that kinda weekend.<\/p>\n<p><em>Where I&#8217;m going:<\/em> On a quick trip to Louisiana next weekend, for Amy&#8217;s godson&#8217;s birthday.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m happy about:<\/em> That Rufus had a good time at the <a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/chimeraobscura\/sets\/72157605357949776\/\" target=\"_blank\">opening of the local farmers&#8217; market<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m sad about:<\/em> Harvey Korman&#8217;s death. &#8220;That&#8217;s Hedley!&#8221; (oh, and Sydney Pollack and Yves Saint Laurent, too)<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m pondering:<\/em> What intimation of mortality led me to go downstairs on Sunday morning and start pulling books from my library and putting them in the &#8220;I will never get around to reading this in my lifetime&#8221; pile. Later in the day, I found a neat article by Luc Sante about <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB121217626838633437.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Book Collection That Devoured My Life<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Over the years I&#8217;ve gotten used to the inevitable questions about my accumulation of books. No, I haven&#8217;t read all of them, nor do I intend to &#8212; in some cases that&#8217;s not the point. No, I&#8217;m not a lawyer (a question usually asked by couriers, back in the days of couriers). I do have a few hundred books that I reread or consult fairly regularly, and I have a lot of books pertaining to whatever current or future projects I have on the fire, and I have many, many books speculatively pointing toward some project that is still barely a gleam in my eye. I have a lot of books that I need for reference, especially now that I live 40 minutes away from the nearest really solid library. I have some books that exist in the same capacity as the more recondite tools in the chest of a good carpenter &#8212; you may not need it more than once in 20 years, but it&#8217;s awfully nice to have it there when you do. Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind &#8212; my brain isn&#8217;t big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What I&#8217;m reading: D\u00c3\u00a6monomania, by John Crowley, and some comics by Jason, the Norwegian cartoonist who&#8217;s currently doing the 1-pagers in the NYTimes magazine. What I&#8217;m listening to: 5:55, by Charlotte Gainsbourg. What I&#8217;m watching: The third season of The Wire, and Bowfinger. What I&#8217;m drinking: Cherry Coke. It was that kinda weekend. Where I&#8217;m &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-6208\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What It Is: 6\/2\/08&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-xD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}