Belle “liked” my cat — oh, sure, sure! She adored cats and she loved my incipent bald spot and admired my choice in restaurants and she liked everything about me.

But liking cats is hard to fake to a cat person. There are cat people and there are others, more than a majority probably, who “cannot abide a harmless, necessary cat.” If they try to pretend, out of politeness or any reason, it shows, because they don’t understand how to treat cats — and cat protocol is more rigid that that of diplomacy.

Y’know, I read 73 books in 2007 (45 in 2005, 37 in 2006). 2008 has started well, too. But I’m already 32! Say I have another fifty years to live… it’s horrible how puny my number can be, compared to all the books I WANT to read! (Heck, it’s puny compared to the size of my book collection!) I need to buy lottery tickets. And when I win, and they ask me, So, what are you going to do with seventeen gazimillion dollars? I’ll say, I’m going to read. To buy books and read. And I would, too. Don’t try to impress upon me how little one lives when one reads; if you can think this way, we’ll never see eye to eye. I can read anywhere, too, allowing me to travel physically as well. *Sigh* Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some lottery tickets to buy.

(Granny Weatherwax speaking to Mightily Oats)

– There’s no grays, only white that got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

– It’s a lot more complicated than that–

– No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.

– Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–

– But they starts with thinking about people as things…

I love reading old sci-fi. I often enjoy the naïveté and the places where the author’s historical background comes through, with much straying from what the future actually became (heard any woman called “toots” recently?). “The Time Machine” is a short, enjoyable read, but… it is quite moralizing. As in, human progress and facility, taken too far, will turn us into blabbering idiots, because it is adversity and novelty that triggers intelligence. Well… maybe. It seems a little simplistic and convenient to the author’s apparent opinion, but… maybe. Who am I to say that H.G. Wells went wrong, when he postulates his future in the year 802,701?

– THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.

– What does it contain, then?

– ME.

– Besides you I mean!

Death gave him a puzzled look.

– I’M SORRY?

The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards

– I meant, said Ipslore, bitterly, what is there in this world that makes living worth while?

Death thought about it.

– CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.

First I must admit that I have a major crush on Ken Jennings. In my house, nobody wonders who I’m referring to when I, as I often do, yell out “Ken is the man!” (Sad, huh? Yeah well you’re not too hot yourself!). Who is Ken? Aw, gees. Ken is only the god of Jeopardy! The guy who stayed on for months and who was not only smart and full of useless information (not so useless once it makes you a millionnaire, though, huh?) but also very funny (I thought I’d die from laughter when he uttered “What are the munchies, man?”) and quirky. A geek. A friendly geek. (Mormon, too, which I thought was good since I could be his second wife, but not so good since I don’t think he’d see my drinking as a good thing… Yes, I love Ken so much that, like a silly schoolgirl, I have pondered such things. Sure, you can make fun of me, but wait until I’m Mrs. Ken Jennings the Second! Actually, and more seriously, my crush on him is mostly intellectual/geeky, and one of the new goals of my life (urr, not really) is now to become known as Ken Jennings’ sexual predator and/or creepy online “friend” (his words).) Anyway all this explains thay when I found out he had written a book (Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs), I just had to buy it, and once it was here I had to read it. Yes I also want his games, and yes I have subscribed to mental_floss (I am just waiting for more of those friendly gift certificates, people — I cannot be any less subtle!).

Anyway. The book. It’s sweet. (See? Again with the schoolgirl!) It’s exactly what I wanted, and much more. Much more? It is a review and a history of trivia, filled itself with trivia, complete with an exploration of what trivia is (and isn’t) and filled with fun and interesting anecdotes and visits (Ken has apparently been going all over the US to meet influencial and more or less remembered trivia heroes and superpowers). What I wanted? The book does recount Ken’s Jeopardy! saga, complete with behind-the-scenes how-it-happened stories (for my personal delight, okay?). Now… I wanted more. (Have we established already that I will always want more Ken?) I recognized it immediately, this selfish, selfish need to know more, to get my foot a little further into the door (this being a book, it is not easy to do). As a teen I probably would not have been satisfied with this need-for-more (luckily, I did not have a large enough allowance to start stalking more-than-unknown people), but since then I too have been the semi-willing “victim” of inadventent “fame” (hmm… Ken is famous. I was just “recognized” and “known”, but it was a smaller market. I’ll take his public “hey it’s the Jeopardy! guy” over my too-often-heard (right in my face!) “Oh no, not her!” any day, man, any day), and so I can understand that being a private person is actually a good thing (for the person herself, not for stalker-wannabes, of course). And hell, since adults only get the allowance they manage to carve off for themselves and since mine is still small, I’ll even accept it.

I devoured Brainiac. Ken manages to be funny…
a) like he is and has always shown himself to be;
b) like a (good, very good) blogger;
c) quite precisely in the same way as my friends and I, peppering sentences with pop culture references;
d) you’ve guessed it, all of the above.

It didn’t hurt that he’s about my age and so that we share many cultural references. It didn’t hurt that he’s a geek and so am I. It didn’t hurt that I already adored the guy. But… The fact is, had I picked up the book without any foreknowledge, I would have enjoyed it just as much and come out of it liking this guy just as much as I did after seeing him on TV for six months every evening. Heck, he even managed to reconcile me with the Kid’s damn Guinness Book of World Records (which I also adored as a child, but I’ll say it again, in those days it had all the cool gory stuff you won’t find in it anymore), which he insists on showing to me (yeah I’m fascinated by that guy who eats metal — what a great endeavour… don’t you have some homework to do?). It’s a great geek read (just like Guinness’, but, hmmm, for adults with more than a squirrel’s attention span), and if you’ve been wondering whether all that random information that litters your brain serves any purpose, you should probably read it (and feel better, though not richer). I must warn you, however, that you may find yourself fighting an urge to find that dusty old Trivial Pursuit box from the attic and to watch Jeopardy! It’s a risk I am willing to take again (please Ken, tell me you’ll write more!).

The electronic age (…) angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software. (1971)

The future of the future is the present. (1967)

What we ordinarily think of as present is really past.

In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin. (1964)

The alphabet (and its extension into typography) made possible the spread of the power that is knowledge and shattered the bonds of tribal man, thus exploding him into an agglomeration of individuals. Electric writing and speed pour upon him instantaneously and continuously the concerns of all other men. He becomes tribal once more. The human family becomes one tribe again. (1964)

A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters. (1964)

If there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag and other times when you do.

Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.

It is from this vantage point that I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It’s a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why?

Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats).

So, you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one.

At times I like being this person far better than I like being the one I am the rest of the hours, which are often messy beyond belief. To write is to sign up for a life of despair; to proofread is to sign up for a life with no hope of glory, but no chance of despair. It is only when you think you might enjoy some despair, not to mention glory, every once in a while that problems arise. I start to feel like a loser even as I welcome proofreading’s tender embrace. It offers the infinite sweetness of a life simplified, well contained between the turning of the first bright white blank page and the last one on which “A Note About the Type” has been set with sober care.

— From: High Colonic, by Melissa Holbrook Pierson, salon.com, July 26, 2006.