I recorded my computer use for an entire working week.  This meant that I kept track of how much time, at what time of day, and what activities I was performing while sitting in front of a keyboard.  Here are graphs of the findings:

Disgusting, huh?  1/3 of my week was spent in front of a computer.  Disconnected at least a little bit from what was going on in real life around me.  Gross.

Click here to download the original spreadsheet.

So I’ve stumbled on some fun things lately and added a few new links (on the blogroll to the left).  Here’s a rundown:

BooHoo is a blog by Joe Dummitt.  He’s the one who is living in Argentina and whose voice occasionally shows up in the Covers Project portion of this blog.  Check out what he’s doing down South.

Brett Harmon is a close friend of mine who travels too much.  He also does some good things in terms of design and photography.  Check out his (huge array) of talents here.

Seminary Co-Op Books is a great book store in Chicago.  I occasionally write book reviews for them, so check out their blog of wonderful, intelligent front table books.

And some things keeping me happy:

The Mountain Goats.  Singing “One Fine Day.”  He goes from playfully giggling to unbelievably intense by the end.  I encourage watching this one straight through.

And here is The Mountain Goats playing “Cubs in Five,” this version especially poignant since it’s in Chicago.

Lyrics here.

Later on today, I’ll be making this trek.  By plane, of course.  And in about 2.5 hours, not 10.

As Against Me! (in their days before lameness) said, I’m going to, “the middle of America, cause six cylinders will take us farther than any president…”

“with the company of those friends, we drove on through the night, behind the wheel of Armageddon.”

From the beleaguering rant of the Penguin to the exasperated yet calm face of Batman… all the way to the condescension in the moderator’s tone and the side of the screen the candidates appear on, this is frighteningly familiar.

Oh Adam West… what ye could have taught were we listening.

I really hope there’s a lot of ::BAM!:: and ::WHACK!:: in November…

I get nervous a lot.  Sometimes riding the train to work is enough to make me vibrate for the rest of the day.  So when my friend suggested we go to Storm King Art Center, I readily agreed.

I drove.

“…and these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.”

I used to have an Uncle who farmed. He’d built his house with his own hands then maintained his acreage over twenty-some years as an upper-class suburban community thrived on all sides of him. He tended to his property throughout the year, always with a smile. He was the sort that always had fresh vegetables on the table, brewed his own beer, and had cable TV only so that he could catch the 5-day forecast on the Weather Channel.

Among all the things he taught me, I think the ability to pull himself away from his techy job and his unbounded joy while doing it is one of the most important. So, for the purposes of further examining this whole “communicating over distances” or “figuring out where things are interfered with” idea, I will be recording all the time I spend interacting with something digital for one week. Keyboards and TVs/computer screens will be the primary culprits. I will not be including phone time, since that is actual interaction. Journal writing will not be counted either, as that is a physical, analog process that results in something of permanence.

Mainly, I’ll be seeking to observe just how much time I spend moderately disconnected from the physical things going on around me.

Expect a full graphical and textual report in one week.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a secret game going on over at the Heave offices.  There they are in Chicago, 800 miles away, giggling to themselves, gleefully coming up with ways to get me to write more embarrassing stuff about myself.  Bastards…

This week’s RoundTable question was, “If you could travel back in time and pick one song to lose your virginity to, what would it be?”

I responded as such:If I were to be able to get all Marty McFly on myself, I have a feeling I’d have to throw Patti Smith’s debut Horses on as the younger me found his way past the waistline of his own first Gloria. When it comes to sultry and intellectual singers, the queen of late-70s New York and seminal riotgrrl cannot do any wrong.

The steady build from piano-accompanying vocals in shoe-dragger time to all-out rock anthem is a perfect punctuation for any landmark action and, lyrically, it doesn’t get much more base and primal than the lyrics penned by Van Morrison and taken over by Patti Smith’s uber-feminism. With piano-punching accents while Patti screams that she’s “knocking on my door” and getting ready to “take the big plunge” tangling with its simplistic and methodical beating of three brilliant chords, “Gloria” can even get the Chess team to saunter up to Varsity cheerleaders.

But honestly, there is no one in the world who doesn’t want the last words before the “culmination” (both in song and “action”) to be, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins… but not mine.” Sinning for six whole minutes of the most intense and visceral rock of all time… where’s Doc Brown? I need to borrow the Delorean. Check it out here.

And to read my fellow Heave-er’s responses, click here.

Amid a torrent of criticism from the American press concerning supposedly “anti-American” comments, the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm has announced that Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the prize.

While I feel that some of what Horace Engdahl (the Academy’s permanent secretary) said about American writers being too wrapped-up in their own insulated culture is true, his comments also seem to signal a disregard for American art because of a supposed direct link between artist and culture. Or perhaps these comments signal a disregard for the fact that an artist can operate outside of his government and economy’s interest? His comments also disregard the fact that it may be possible for any author from any European nation to be “insulated.” Further, and most appalling, he disregards a much-held belief about narrative and literature: that the highly specific can be the most globally connected.

Need I look to Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Thompson, Parker, or Morrison (even the more contemporary Safran-Foer, Eggers, and Franzen) to realize this? They all root their writing in American characters and experiences, yet are decorated and read worldwide for a variety of reasons.

I’m not appalled that an American didn’t win. I am, however, appalled that these writers may not even stand a chance in being considered for this honor anymore.

On the other hand, this whole “Euro-centric literary world” thing is providing me with quite a good reason to permanently cross the pond.

Photo compliments of Anna Peters

According to energyfiend.com, it is going to take me 78.09 cups of coffee in order to die.  Realizing that there’s a possibility you could die from a defined amount of a substance you put in your body every day should be a frightening thing, right?  For some reason, it’s comforting knowing that there’s no way I could ever fit 624 ounces of coffee inside of my body, and thus, cannot die from this habit.  Thanks, fine folks at EnergyFiend!  You’ve given me a reason to continue throwing money into the grinder.